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COPYRIGHT DEPOi 


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HORATIO’S STORY 










HORATIO’S STORY 


GORDON KING 

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0 good Horatio, what a wounded name, 

Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! 

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 

Absent thee from felicity a while, 

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, 
To tell my story. 

—Hamlet to Horatio. 


» 3 ) 


BONI AND LIVERIGHT 

Publishers New York 


?Z 3 

.Ks** 4 * 


Copyright, IQ23, by 
Gordon Congdon King 


V 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


OCT 12 ’23 i 


©C1A76Q333 




To 

C. W. K. 








HORATIO’S STORY 


HORATIO’S STORY 


CHAPTER I 

Rhoda Lispenyard-Child always had an enticing 
way of getting people to do favours for her. A slightly 
beckoning movement of the lips, an uncertain quiver of 
the eyes, or a designating gesture from her always glove¬ 
less hand would bring me, or almost any man she knew, 
at once to her feet. What she wanted seemed to make no 
difference. But it must be admitted that she used this 
power rarely and then most sparingly. In fact, she prided 
herself upon her independence with perfect justice, and 
you always felt in her debt, or at least I did, and when she 
asked some trivial thing I thought she bestowed upon 
me some vast favour. For friendship knows how impos¬ 
sible it is to justify its mysterious faith in devotion. Per¬ 
haps real friendship begins only when we cast aside all 
hope of keeping the scales even, when gratitude gives up 
all hope of paying its debt. 

When she left us finally Rhoda gave me a last oppor¬ 
tunity to serve her. She made me promise that I would 
clear her name and explain to those who knew her what 
her life had really been. I agreed to do so, and at that 
time I expected to find it a simple duty. I had thought that 
people would be pleased to learn the truth, but upon 
attempting to explain the situation to those who had 
previously, and I think erroneously, thought themselves 

9 


10 


HORATIO’S STORY, 

concerned in Rhoda’s affairs, I ran amuck of traits of 
human nature the existence of which, in my naive way, I 
had never suspected. 

Almost invariably her friends and relatives took the 
matter in one of two ways: either they desired to quiet 
the troubled waters in order to diminish the possible effect 
of Rhoda’s vicious example, and so closed the doors upon 
any discussion of the scandal; or, as if to enhance their 
own reputations both social and intellectual, they insisted 
upon rating their version of the gossip higher than mine, 
and adding to it any untoward implication their puerile 
imaginations could supply. 

I therefore gave up hope of complying with Rhoda’s 
request so simply, and am now determined to write down 
the whole story, and overcome thereby the sting of having 
failed to fulfil an act of friendship. Rhoda knew better 
than I. She told me in the first place that it would be 
necessary to do it in writing, but I would not then concede 
the point as I do now. Those who refused to listen, and 
those who insisted upon aggravating her error, will be 
driven to read this by their own malignant curiosity. 
Henceforth they may continue their falsehood if they 
please, but if they continue to convince the honest-minded 
I shall certainly be remiss in my undertaking. 

Of course Rhoda did not ask me to give an account of 
her life merely to explain away an idle scandal that she 
thought clouded her last hours in Belmont unjustly. She 
believed herself the epitome of the modern woman— 
strictly speaking, the contemporary woman—and visited 
upon herself at all times the ruthless severity of a self- 
sacrificing member of an idealistic movement. What 
preyed upon her mind unduly was the thought that she 
had lived in vain. She deplored having the generally 
ignominious opinion of herself prevail over those few 
whom she loved and who had, indeed, cared for her. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


11 


In asking me to be the one to clear her name she used 
deliberation not altogether characteristic of her nature as 
I understood it. Usually Rhoda arrived at her conclu¬ 
sions as fast as the problems presented themselves to her, 
by means of intuition, a faculty commonly said to be the 
special endowment of the feminine mind. I think that this 
time Rhoda arrived at her conclusion by the masculine 
process of elimination. She thought that I was the only 
friend left who could do it, and she believed me, though 
in some respects hostile toward her as a critic, fair enough 
and imaginative enough to deal justly and sympathetically 
with her remains. She thought too that I was the only 
one of her friends with sufficient leisure to undertake the 
rehabilitation of her reputation. 

It was characteristic of her to overlook the fact that I 
preserve an unusual margin of leisure in my daily life be¬ 
cause I regard it as a precious good, without which life 
seems to me, if not unbearable, certainly worthless. But 
she is by no means the only person to think that because 
I refrain from obvious activity I have nothing to do; the 
notion is unhappily spread abroad. 

Whatever the obligations of friendship, my propensities 
hardly favour me in carrying out Rhoda’s request. I 
rarely read works of biography or prose fiction, and I 
have never possessed the slightest desire to compose them. 
It will therefore be a difficult task for me to hand down 
the narrative justly. 

For one thing, try as I may, I shall not be able to keep 
myself wholly out of it. I was too close to Rhoda for 
her to have escaped my being a significant fact in her 
environment. Another reason is that one cannot do 
more than approximate the truth that one desires to re¬ 
veal. For the first time I realize why painters sometimes 
employ the delightful subterfuge of giving only the back 
of the model directly and showing the face through a 


12 


HORATIO’S STORY 


mirror. Rhoda’s own testimony becomes mine when I 
present it as evidence. And as is true of almost every 
biographic work, other faculties of the mind than those 
involved in a mere retailing of fact are necessary. I shall 
have to interpret the facts of Rhoda’s life as I go along, 
for they presented themselves to me during a period of 
years of acquaintance and are so small a part of her 
story as to be in themselves quite useless. 

To emphasize once more, at the danger of being tedious, 
the personal element in this undertaking, what was once 
seen and heard by me has now passed through a process 
of memory and recollection, a process that gives it form, 
colour, and remodelling according to the eccentricities of 
my own mind. 

In order, therefore, to reduce the fraction of error 
to a minimum, I may be pardoned perhaps if I first give 
an account of my own life. This, too, will have a frac¬ 
tion of error but, unless I am mistaken, it will neverthe¬ 
less serve as a corrective for my version of the story of 
Rhoda Lispenyard-Child. In other words the more nearly 
we can establish the author’s point of view, the better can 
we correct his errors of perspective. 

David Hume began his autobiography with this remark: 
“It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself with¬ 
out vanity; therefore I shall be short.” Without attempt¬ 
ing to conceal my vanity I shall, if possible, use fewer 
words than he and come a little nearer the truth. 

My name is Lee Seebohm, and I was born in Boston, 
5 January, 1876. My childhood was spent in that city 
and in Washington, D. C., my father being a Senator 
from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1874 to 
1898; but, after the time I entered Latin Grammar School, 
I rarely left Boston or its suburbs, being averse to travel 
and more than willing to bear the ignominy of provincial¬ 
ity. I was sent to college at Arlington University and 


HORATIO'S STORY 


13 


there distinguished myself generally in my studies and 
particularly in philosophy and the sciences closely allied 
to metaphysical speculation. Upon taking a degree in 
1899 I received with great delight a three years’ resident 
fellowship, and applied myself vigorously to my research. 
Besides taking the historical courses of study common 
to most American colleges, I went to Harvard University 
and studied the then contemporary schools of thought, 
especially the work of the late Professor William James, 
the late Professor Hugo Miinsterberg, and Dr. George 
Santayana. In 1902 I had the privilege of accepting the 
position of Lecturer in Philosophy at Arlington which I 
held for seven years. 

Although my academic duties took a great deal of my 
time during this period I pursued my independent studies 
without serious interruption. For two years I studied 
logic and mathematics; for one year, aesthetics; and for 
four years, psychology, being convinced that the future 
of philosophical thought would depend upon suggestions 
from that science. Following these labours I published 
my first book, a work on psycho-physics, based on a 
course of Lowell Institute Lectures that I delivered in 
1908. 

In 1909 I became a full professor but I suffered 
shortly thereafter a great depression. My work dissatis¬ 
fied me, and I seemed to lose a certain self-confidence that 
had always sustained me before and has since. The cure 
was simple, once I lit upon it. I recommenced my educa¬ 
tion at the beginning and worked right through to the 
end at a cost of five years. Extravagant as this was I 
felt repaid. In the autobiographic Education of Henry 
Adams more than one chapter comes to a close with the 
remark “this was not education.” I often wondered 
whether he would have reached the same conclusion had 
he used my method, and what the result would have been 


i 4 HORATIO'S STORY 

had I followed the method he recommended—that of visit¬ 
ing world’s fairs habitually. 

At the age of forty-five, therefore, I find myself with 
fairly extensive knowledge and a more or less disciplined 
mind in the field of learning that concerns me, but with 
very little in constructive work actually accomplished. 
Perhaps it does not matter, for the philosophy that pre¬ 
ceded the recent war is doomed to perish, and in the re¬ 
maining years of my life I hope to take an insignificant 
part in the beginnings of a new renaissance. For I think 
that we shall be unwilling to put our faith in any system 
of knowledge that does not avoid the dangers of romantic 
idealism and equally romantic materialism or naturalism. 
Civilization, I have come to believe, must be based upon 
a scale of values essentially different from that of this 
generation, and it is precisely with the matter of funda¬ 
mental value that philosophy and religion concern them¬ 
selves. 

But as I write this I am conscious that Rhoda would 
hardly consider that I approach any nearer to the fulfil¬ 
ment of her wish and my most rash promise. She would 
declare that if I can come no nearer to the life of a man 
whom I know fairly well, I cannot be expected to deal 
with a woman whom I knew surely less well. I shall 
therefore try again, this time with the assistance of Scotch 
and soda, to tell the story of my life with more considera¬ 
tion for the reason that prompts me to do it. 

My father was not a bad sort. He really loved children 
and treated them with kindness and indulgence. He did 
not, however, become sentimental or erratic over them. 
He was a picturesque, humorous, and generous old soul, 
excessively cultivated and chivalrously moral. I never 
knew what he did in politics; as a public man he seemed 
to me evasive and a good deal of a coward. No doubt 
he wanted to do for his constituents the best that he knew 


HORATIO’S STORY 


15 

how, as he certainly did for his family, but the fear of up¬ 
setting the sure progress of the Senate inhibited him con¬ 
stantly, a fear which I could never understand, for I 
always thought the Senate a legitimate place for my father 
to introduce legislation. 

Of my mother, who died whilst I was still an infant, 
I can of course remember nothing. She seems, however, 
to have had an effect on the characters of my elder 
brothers, both of whom are considerably older than I. 
I cannot say that they were more pleasure-seeking than 
I, for I was from the earliest beginnings of personality 
an indulgent and obstinate fellow, but they found their 
pleasures in more concrete and material ways. They were 
more emotional, more sensitive, more practical. Both of 
them embraced the legal profession. Perhaps in a few 
years we can say that they have been more successful 
than I, but at present it would be unsafe to assume that 
they are nearer the doors of their conceived paradise 
than I mine. 

Our essential differences may have been due to the 
fact that they were brought up by a woman and I, arriv¬ 
ing into the family so late that I always felt my welcome 
to be a matter of charity, was raised by my aged father. 
From the way in which my brothers seduce juries and 
clients to this day, and from the way in which they fight 
shy of the slightest abstraction or theory in discourse 
with a burst of outraged innocence, I believe that, in spite 
of their great stature and proud physical beauty, they re¬ 
ceived a larger share of the feminine genius of the race 
than their younger brother ever hopes to possess. 

The first twenty-four years of my life were without 
romance of sufficient significance to retain a place in my 
memory, but during the first year that I held my fellow¬ 
ship, I fell in love with a Radcliffe girl, an affair that I 
shall have occasion to describe in detail later. For the 


i6 


HORATIO’S STORY 


present all I need say is that the lady in question could 
not see anything in my attentions that gave promise of 
future happiness. 

The effect of having the woman of one’s choice reject 
one with a decisiveness from which appeal is useless 
varies much according to temperament. In my case it had 
the effect of rendering me generally susceptible to the 
enchantments of women, and in particular eager to take 
the offensive against young women who in some ways 
seemed similar to her who had rejected me. 

Being fairly active at that time in Boston society 
and having a slight acquaintance with many young women, 
I was exposed to a great deal of feminine charm, and 
within three months of the time I had stubbed my toe at 
Radcliffe College, I became secretly engaged to a young 
girl whose chief characteristics were her beauty and her 
high social standing. We straightway eloped, and I re¬ 
member that upon our return my brothers for the first 
time divided their opinion of me. Hallam, the elder, said 
that it was extraordinarily inconsiderate of me not to 
remember the state of my father’s nerves. Sidney, how¬ 
ever, grasped my hand warmly; “I’m so damned glad,” 
he had the impudence to say, “that you remembered to 
go through with the formality of a wedding that I forgive 
you everything!” As a matter of fact I had thought that 
my father would suffer less from one sharp blow than 
the excitement of an engagement and a formal wedding, 
and Sidney’s remark did not give me any more pleasure 
than Hallam’s censure. Forgiveness, I have found, is 
something that always gets in the way unless you have a 
craving for it, when one word will surfeit. But I was 
dazed at the time, and did not much care what was said. 

My father being then hopelessly feeble, we remained 
in the old house on Beacon Hill, both of my brothers hav¬ 
ing establishments of their own further out on Common- 


HORATIO'S STORY 


*7 

wealth Avenue. Shortly thereafter the old Senator took 
sick and died. We remained in town; it was my wish to 
go to the suburbs but my wife preferred a more active 
social life than the outskirts of Boston could offer her. 

There is no boredom like the tediousness of a social 
life that for one reason or another fails to give the dis¬ 
traction, the stimulation, and the friendliness that a man 
feels that he has a right to expect when he puts on his 
dinner jacket. There is no loneliness like the solitude of 
meeting constantly goodly numbers of men and women 
on terms of accepted social equality, and feeling that the 
equality is so pervasive as to preclude the possibility of 
having one real, chosen friend in the lot. 

I began to be restless. Boston society could not even 
waste time gracefully. It could neither inspire health nor 
permit the charming vices of exotic decadence. In less 
than a year I began dining privately in my library, and 
very shortly thereafter it was generally understood that 
I was out of society. I pleaded work: what I really 
wanted was leisure. 

This return to normal living strengthened me to survive 
what was probably the greatest shock of my life. In May, 
1903, my wife committed suicide by throwing herself into 
the sea. She had left New York three days previous 
and was on her way to France where I was to have joined 
her at the close of the academic year. 

This event added to the isolation into which I had been 
retiring, and it was some time before I resumed any inter¬ 
course with my relatives and old acquaintances. Being 
then a lecturer in philosophy, I went out to Arlington 
and lived at the university, but there was much that was 
unsatisfactory in that. The students had a way of draw¬ 
ing upon me too deeply and leaving me in a state of in¬ 
tellectual impotence. I cannot spend the day in discus¬ 
sions and explanations, and then have four or five young 



i8 HORATIO’S STORY, 

men find their way to my room at night and oblige me 
to talk. There comes a time when a teacher should turn 
upon the pack of wolves and say: “Gentlemen, I have 
no perpetual fountain of wisdom. Why do you insist 
upon pumping me dry? You must give me peace to go 
on with my studies; you must let me rejuvenate myself. 1 ” 

I determined to build a house in the country and live 
the life of a scholar and a gentleman. At Belmont I 
found a delightful site not far from the golf links of 
the country club. I sold my Beacon Hill property and 
got to work with architect and builder. First I had one 
large room constructed, to serve primarily as a library. 
It is of oak with great rafters and panels, and a large 
gray fireplace—of limestone, I think. In one end there 
is an organ, the only musical instrument that I play with 
any pleasure, and in the other end are my books and 
table. The longer walls are cut, on one side with the 
fireplace in front of which are a divan, a bench and a 
few chairs, and the remaining wall is cut with French 
windows opening upon the porch. I took my fathers 
best rugs, and decorated some shelves of my bookcases 
with pottery, chiefly Persian or alleged to be so, that I 
had gathered myself; and I have since been collecting a 
few Zorn etchings for the panels, which is odd, my friends 
say, because I don’t like swimming. 

The windows are fairly large, but I did not give the 
room as much light as a painter or artist would require. 
I enjoy long shadows with their delicate gradations of 
colour rather than the high lights of most studios. In 
this room I placed most of the things to which I am 
attached, and of course my small library, which consists 
of only some four thousand books, the value of which, 
if they could have value for anyone else, lies in the 
selection. 

The remainder of the house I left wholly to the archi- 


HORATIO’S STORY, 19 

tect, and he finished it with a pleasing combination of 
simplicity and comfort. It was completed in the spring 
of 1905. 

There I have sat over fifteen years going on with my 
studies and speculations. It is only fair to say that dur¬ 
ing the great upheaval of the World War I remained 
at peace there without taking the slightest part in it. 
I acted as though there were really no war going on. 
I am no pacifist by intellectual or religious conviction. I 
am inclined that way by habit, temperament, and occupa¬ 
tion. I thought my work so much more important than 
anything else I could do, and I argued that there ought 
to be at least one civilian left to fight for. The ease with 
which European and American philosophers threw down 
their pens and took up their swords, or practiced journal¬ 
ism on behalf of the non-combatant mobilization, shocked 
me thoroughly. It seemed to me par excellence the time 
to sit on a barrel of rum and think. 

I began to lose faith in the power of contemporary 
thought to exert any influence for good. It seemed to 
me that civilization would have to produce a new philoso¬ 
phy, and that the spectacle of our greatest thinkers all 
throwing aside their work and taking up the social and 
military sciences, showed quite clearly that they them¬ 
selves had no doubts of the ineffectiveness of their 
powers. I succumbed to a vast skepticism which I have 
shaken off only very recently. 

Meanwhile the mention of a few events during this 
period will help to explain the apparent monotony of my 
career. It was during my third year as lecturer that I 
drafted my book on psycho-physics. A few years later 
it was received with a most profound silence; but lately, 
however, I find it quoted, which gives me pleasure. The 
only deliberate criticism that it received was from the 
celebrated Dr. Edelman of New York, who attacked it 


20 


HORATIO’S STORY 


in the medical journal with all the vehemence and arro¬ 
gance of the psychoanalytic school. 

Nevertheless it established me as a philosopher in the 
estimation of those who read either the book or the re¬ 
view. My colleagues at Arlington gave it kind attention. 
Unfortunately the publishers never delivered themselves 
of five hundred copies, and what they did sell I am sure 
went to libraries. While there was still some feeble dis¬ 
cussion of the merits of this little book, I had a stroke of 
good fortune that has meant a good deal to me, chiefly 
through the added estimation in which I am held as a 
result of it. 

One of the more remote satellites of Arlington Univer¬ 
sity is the New Balliol Theological Seminary which we 
absorbed only very recently. New Balliol is character¬ 
ized by a plentiful lack of students and, distinct from its 
ample endowment and real property, one endowed chair 
created through the last will and testament of one John 
Jay Brewer who died in 1869. The securities of this en¬ 
dowment having increased abundantly and without taxa¬ 
tion, the stipend is now between eleven and twelve thou¬ 
sand dollars, which is more than sufficient for most philos¬ 
ophers whether they have private means or not. With 
the death of the late Professor Preserved Hobhouse, this 
chair fell vacant in December, 1908, and in March of the 
following year the Trustees and Faculty of Arlington 
University met to consider filling the vacancy. The 
voting was exceptionally warm and the learned gentle¬ 
men remained deadlocked until the middle of April. No 
quarter being given to either of the opposing candidates, 
it became necessary to bring out some dark horses. 
Luckily being one of the first to be considered in this 
light by the fatigued electors, and having friends on both 
sides, I won the election. To the amazement of my 
elders and betters, I was at the June commencement in 


HORATIO’S STORY 


21 


1909 given the chair as the third Brewer Professor of 
Christian Morals. 

It must be admitted, however, that although there are 
six matriculated divines at the university, I do not have 
much opportunity to fulfil the wishes of the founder of 
the chair. Familiarly I am known to the students as the 
Christian Professor of Brewer Morals, and from the 
present state of my cellar there is more justice in their 
jest than they themselves suppose. Actually I give only 
two courses a year: The Philosophy and Psychology of 
Religion and Religious Experience, and European Reli¬ 
gion and Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century. 

That gives some impression of the kind of man I am, 
neither old nor young, and about ready to put together 
the work of twenty years’ reflection and study. I live 
a lonely life at Belmont and lecture four times a week 
at Arlington. Usually I see little of my neighbours, 
though there are some who are indulgent enough to tol¬ 
erate my playing the organ now and then. When the 
weather is suitable I try a few holes of golf at the country 
club hard by, where I have a few acquaintances. My 
students, who are now very few—sometimes not more 
than twenty meet me in the course of the year—think 
of me as an aloof and disagreeable person; but not one 
of them has ever come to me for assistance that I have 
not done what I could without sparing myself, a fact 
that is not generally known. It is my misfortune that cir¬ 
cumstances prevent me from making the initial advances. 
These circumstances are my irritable disposition, my love 
for leisure and solitude, and my caution lest I intrude 
upon the young. Children have need of disciplining and 
advised intrusion in education, but by the time young men 
and women reach my courses they ought to be ready to 
stand on their own feet. They may accept or reject my 
lectures as they please, but I take care not to interfere 


22 


HORATIO'S STORY 


with their budding maturity. Sometimes, though rarely, 
I profit by their criticism. 

One important fact that I neglected to mention is that 
my wife bore me a son, Wentworth Seebohm, now in 
his twentieth year, who has been something of a responsi¬ 
bility in my life, and will be, I suppose, a year or so 
longer. When not away at school he lives with me at 
Belmont. Partly because I do not wish him to fall a 
victim to the seductions of luxury at too early an age, 
and partly because I count the years I spent in Boston 
living up to the traditions of my father and mother the 
most wasted in my life, I live now in the utmost simplicity, 
with only a man and his wife to serve as butler and cook, 
and a chaufifeur whose wife practices the arts of a 
laundress somewhat inadequately. 

Having given some notion of myself and the preoccupa¬ 
tions of my life, I shall now proceed with the story of 
Miss Rhoda Lispenyard, later Mrs. O’Flarity Child. It 
is to be hoped that what can fairly be expected of me as 
narrator is now reasonably clear, and that the point of 
view thus suggested will help us to see whether she was, 
as she thought herself to be, profoundly misunderstood, 
and, if so, to clear up what misunderstanding we can. 


CHAPTER II 


Rhoda Lispenyard was born in Boston in 1883. She 
is said to have been my first cousin twice removed (how¬ 
ever such things are computed) and I have never argued 
to the contrary. The span of the removal, I thought as 
a boy, was as great as it well could be in Boston. It em¬ 
braced the gulf that separates the rich and the poor. 
Rhoda came into a branch of the family that possessed 
less means by far than the rest and, from all I can 
gather, her childhood must have been fairly unpleasant 
on that account if no other, for her immediate family 
seemed opposed to any pleasures commensurate with its 
income. At any rate I have never known her to look back, 
as most of us do, and say: “Those were the happy days/' 
Even by the familiar process of idealizing things in retro¬ 
spect, she could never raise them to par. 

Her father was an improvident politician, one time 
collector of the port, which was his highest attainment. 
Usually he remained out of office or appointment, and 
as his independent means amounted to almost nothing the 
family suffered. It can be said of some politicians that 
their desire to render unselfish service justifies their 
poverty, for the poorer the politician the more he is gen¬ 
erally thought honest and sincere. Amos Lispenyard 
managed to escape all reverence for his poverty. He had 
never convinced anyone that he was in politics for other 
than his own good, and there is something piteous about 
plying any profession for purely material ends without 
attaining them. 

Rhoda’s mother had a certain sweetness of nature, but 
she was a woman of more than ordinary stupidity and 

23 


HORATIO'S STORY 


24 

timidity, and one who fell an easy and frequent victim to 
hysteria. She possessed, as do many whose circumstances 
have been greatly reduced in life, a superstructure of char¬ 
acter that never seemed convincingly her own. While at 
bottom most of her acts were actuated by motives of gen¬ 
erosity and affection, mingled with a keen sense of duty, 
she acted during the last years of her life according to a 
second nature of great fear and suspicion of evil. Par¬ 
ticularly when her children were involved did her mind 
seethe with the phantoms of cowardice. Above all they 
should climb out of the poverty that suppressed them. 
She feared everything and everybody, and developed a 
false sense of martyrdom that Rhoda despised. 

Mrs. Lispenyard’s hope lay in the ultimate success of 
her four children and it was usually when one of them 
showed signs of failure that she broke down. Instinc¬ 
tively she tried to instill in their hearts an opportunist 
philosophy. Against her better nature she wanted them 
to be shrewd. At school studies did not matter; grades 
and prizes were what she expected them to obtain. In 
social matters she retired rather than entrenched. The 
family suffered isolation through the fact that the children 
were not permitted to associate with their neighbours. 
When circumstances were better, Mrs. Lispenyard would 
argue, she would entertain again. Meanwhile she kept a 
stiff upper lip and dreamed of a future attack on Back 
Bay. 

Rhoda was the third child and the second daughter. 
The elder brother was a worthless fellow who died of 
typhoid in the Spanish War. The sister married early 
and badly and had very little to do with the rest of the 
family. The younger brother, Conrad, has developed a 
character and manner that would grace any family. His 
limitations have been mental; more specifically, he lacks 
imagination and alertness of mind, and thoroughly hates 


HORATIO’S STORY 


25 


using his brain except in matters of business. Conrad 
left school early and became an automobile salesman. 
To-day, I understand, he is a sales manager with a large 
territory and seems to satisfy everyone who has any deal¬ 
ings with him. 

Rhoda saw very little of Conrad later in life but she 
remembered him with sympathy and respect, though she 
could find no positive reason for doing so. It was more 
because he refrained from doing the mean little things 
that had the standing of polite attentions in her family. 
He was indifferent rather than meddling; he didn’t like 
his father and mother and let it be known that his real 
life went on elsewhere. Conrad knew that Rhoda felt 
as he did, but he did not understand that her real life 
went on within herself. ‘Tm going out to-night,” he 
would say, ‘‘hang a light in my room if dad comes in 
early.” But as their alliance was purely defensive their 
friendship was soon forgot when the need of it disap¬ 
peared. 

It was hard for a boy brought up as I was to have any 
conception of the life of a little girl. The significant 
part of it seemed to go on behind closed doors. By the 
time he becomes a young man he no longer feels the 
curiosity that once made him pull back the curtains and 
watch the girls passing in the street and wonder about 
them. 

I recall meeting Rhoda only once while we were still 
children. She and Conrad were visiting our great-uncle 
Thaddeus Collamore in the country and I was there at 
the same time. Her appearance and behaviour were not 
remarkable for a girl of twelve; I did not then think 
she would ever be good to look at, and I am not sure 
that she ever was in any abstract sense. She romped 
about the farm with obvious pleasure. My image of her 
includes such things as two long tightly braided ropes of 


26 HORATIO’S STORY 

hair with saucy, stringy ribbons close to the frayed ends. 
Or, apparently unawares, her big head would appear a 
choppy sea of curl-papers, which I could never under¬ 
stand for her hair was not straight. She was tall and thin 
and had almost no body at all. Her legs were so slender 
that you could not have seen them had it not been for her 
rather large, unkempt boots and the torn knees of her 
faded cotton hose. 

There was already something agile, threatening, rebel¬ 
lious about her. She would clap her hands nervously and 
without apparent reason, and then run and jump reck¬ 
lessly. “I aren’t going to play any more,” she would call 
out and be off to sulk by herself. Little Rhoda’s eyes were 
often wet with tears, but they were full of fight. 

During the same visit I once walked to the post office 
with her, a mile or two distant from the farm. 

“What are you going to do when you grow up?” she 
asked me. I was then eighteen and very serious indeed. 

“I’ve no idea,” I answered, heaving a profound sigh to 
which she paid no attention. 

“Uncle Tad isn’t married, is he?” 

“No, Rhoda, he’s a bachelor.” 

“I’m not going to be married when I grow up.” 

“What does your mother say to that?” I asked. 

“Oh, mother doesn’t know; she thinks I’m going to be 
married. That’s why she sends me to dancing school.” 

“Do you like dancing school, Rhoda ?” 

“I hate it!” she said with a great deal of pride. 

“Maybe when you’re a little older you’ll like doing what 
mother likes you to do. Did you ever think of that ?” 

“No, I won’t!” she said, clapping her hands in a sense¬ 
less way that annoyed me. 

“You can’t be sure, Rhoda. When I was your age 
I wanted above all things to become a Latin teacher, but 


HORATIO’S STORY 27 

now that I’ve finished my six years of Latin I’d hate to 
teach it more than anything in the world.” 

That silenced her for a while. Her whole body seemed 
to reflect a buffeted mood. She planted her feet carefully 
and awkwardly and watched them as she walked along. 
Finally she began kicking up the dust of the dry dirt road 
with each step, placing her foot sidewise and dragging 
it along to the next position. At length a small particle 
of the great cloud of dust brought forth a hearty 
sneeze from me, the resounding cry of which attracted 
Rhoda’s attention. 

“Excuse me,” she said, a little frightened, “I didn't 
mean to do it. I'm afraid I was rude!” She ran over to 
the side of the road and, sitting down, covered her face 
with her hands. 

I brushed the dust from my trousers and laughed. 
“It gave you such pleasure that I didn't like to mention 
it. Come on, take my handkerchief and dry your eyes. 
Nobody’s going to be cross with you.” 

“Thanks,” she said, “I'm always doing the wrong thing. 
You won’t tell, will you?” 

“Never!” 

With a helping hand she came to her feet. Her tears 
had softened the dust on her face and made muddy stains 
on her cheeks. She used my handkerchief to advantage. 

It seemed to me even then that she was bothered with 
the thought that she was not doing what people thought she 
should, and that she couldn’t have a good time without 
packing everyone off about his business. On the way 
home, as we neared my uncle’s, I became lost in thought. 
Suddenly aware that Rhoda was no longer at my side, I 
looked about and spied her perhaps a few hundred feet 
down the road. 

“Now it’s my turn to apologize for being rude,” I said 
when she came up. 


20 


HORATIO'S STORY 


“I won’t tell anybody,” she replied kindly. 

“That’s good of you,” I said, “because I hate being 
scolded.” 

“So do I.” 

“Rhoda,” I asked after a moment, “what do you want 
to do after you grow up?” 

“I want to be alone by myself and have fun!” she said 
instantly. 

My great-uncle Thaddeus loved children excessively. 
He was very old and testy and we all teased him unmerci¬ 
fully to his face, but he seemed to like it and would shake 
a stick at us good-humouredly. With the privilege of the 
generation that preceded my father’s he experienced no 
embarrassment in helping himself generously to a slice 
of plug, which he was inclined to chew thoughtfully when 
not smoking. The trouble with America, he would say 
whenever he was willing to admit that there was anything 
the trouble, is the affectedness and effeminacy of a man¬ 
hood that gave up good chewing-tobacco for luxurious 
cigars and “nasty little cigarettes.” Possessed of vast 
family pride, he would try to get political preferment for 
Amos Lispenyard, but he was too old and too good-natured 
to accomplish anything. People would not keep their 
promises to him, though they would take his money with¬ 
out scruple. 

Democracy with Uncle Tad was a religion. It seemed 
connected in his mind with large families and prosperity. 
I used to wonder what he had been like as a younger man, 
for the few convictions that remained to him were like so 
many mighty trees that, although seriously damaged, had 
managed to remain standing while a forest fire had obliter¬ 
ated the wood beneath them and given birth to a crop of 
impertinent fire weed. 

It helped to satisfy his passion for large families to 
assemble each year at his farm at Chester, Massachusetts, 


HORATIO'S STORY 


29 


a goodly number of grandnephews and grandnieces; he 
took care to invite everyone who might possibly be imagined 
in some way related to him, and I sometimes think that his 
passion for democracy was due to his desire to keep the 
subject of discrepancy of income from attaining too much 
importance in the family. 

Thaddeus Collamore was a man of few responsibilities, 
ample means, and great generosity. After that summer 
he undertook, for example, the education of Rhoda and 
Conrad. I have never understood, and perhaps it is 
fatuous to ask, whether he did it out of love for the two 
children or because he did not like to see that branch of 
the family run down; but he did it beautifully. He was 
one of those men who know how to give gifts. No one’s 
feelings were hurt and hardly anyone knew it. 

Thus life picked up for Rhoda after her twelfth year. 
She could go to better schools, could have better books and 
clothes. Her piano and dancing classes, though quite as 
conventional and unpleasant as possible, at least had the 
advantage of being generally considered the best. Cook¬ 
ing, dish-washing, and sewing still continued at home. It 
was not that these operations are in themselves unpleasant, 
for in fair doses they have a salutary effect. It was rather 
that the conditions under which they were performed were 
squalid; it was because her mother and father looked 
down upon themselves for doing such things and thought 
them beneath their dignity that Rhoda hated it all so. 

That, I think, was the secret of the unhappiness that 
clouded the Lispenyard family. Unfortunately as time 
went on it expanded and consumed rather than extermi¬ 
nated itself. Despising themselves led to jealousy of 
Rhoda, who was proud and independent, and who would 
almost certainly succeed in escaping that poverty in the 
course of a few years. This hostility accentuated and 
deepened Rhoda’s vision of the life beyond and her unwil- 


HORATIO’S STORY 


30 

lingness to come to terms with life as it surrounded her. 
She thrust herself forward upon her imagination. Her 
first childish plan of prolonged celibacy was nothing but 
a vague desire to escape, and it vanished with an increasing 
realization of the economic and social structure of life as 
it was; but the effects of this vision never seemed to leave 
her. Even before she went to college, and it was perhaps 
the reason for her going, she saw the possibility of making 
for herself a life based upon a capacity to earn her living 
in some way not altogether distasteful. 

It was always a matter of regret to me that I did not 
know Rhoda as a child, but it was rare indeed for a Boston 
lad to have any notion of a girl before her debut. Every 
girl had a debut in those days, though it was not always 
celebrated in the fashionable way with a day set for it. 
Usually it meant only a new frock, or a new idea, but there 
came a time in the life of the normal girl when she changed 
her attitude toward young men significantly. 

Besides my vague recollection of that summer at Uncle 
Tad's, I have no notion of what Rhoda was like before 
she was seventeen or eighteen. Even what she told me 
reminiscently failed to make anything clear in my mind. 
She did not live in Back Bay, but the traditions and aspira¬ 
tions of the family made her suffer from having to assume 
manners and an attitude that certainly did not have any 
relation to life as she had perforce to live it, and very likely 
did not have any application outside of Back Bay, and 
perhaps not a great deal there. The Lispenyards got the 
very worst that New England had to offer; they could 
never do more than imitate, and imitators are rarely 
fortunate in their selections. 

I saw nothing of her until her freshman year at Rad- 
cliffe College, which was the first year of my fellowship 
at Arlington. I was then working regularly in Cambridge 
under James and Munsterberg, and we were therefore 


HORATIO’S STORY 


31 

neighbours a good part of the time. At Thanksgiving that 
year Uncle Tad mobilized the family at his table in Brook¬ 
line. He swore—it turned out falsely—that he gathered 
us together for the last time, and most of us got out our 
handkerchiefs. 

Rhoda was my dinner partner; the lady on the other 
side of me was someone I have never seen before or since 
except at funerals and weddings, and I paid no particular 
attention to her. Rhoda had lost most of her childishness 
but she was by no means a woman. Her body seemed to 
have paused in its rapid growth and busied itself in filling 
in and lopping off, in giving form and character that came 
short by a good deal of any completeness. Nevertheless, 
its very incompleteness had charm. There was nothing 
final about her, nothing decided unless perhaps an irritable 
temperament. So much remained possible that she appealed 
to the imagination. Her features did not yet hang together 
as they afterward did. You were aware that she had 
fine, clear eyes, but it took a year or two before you were 
aware of her glance. Her mouth, too, baffled me. It stood 
out from her face aind seemed eager to speak. A few years 
later I waited for her words. Her hair was brown and 
curling; her eyes, gray and fearless; the cheek bones high, 
the nose regular, and her mouth and chin determined 
without sharpness. 

“When are you going to have a coming-out party ?” 
I asked stupidly by way of beginning. 

“I did,” she said, “but nobody knew anything about it.” 

“You might have told us,” I said. 

“There was nothing to tell. I simply decided to con¬ 
sider the party an accomplished fact. That was much the 
easiest way and there didn't need to be any discussion 
about it.” 

“I never saw you looking so well,” I ventured. 


32 


HORATIO'S STORY 


She flew to arms at once. “Must everyone talk about 
my appearance!” she said, her eyes flashing. 

“Sorry,” I said in embarrassment. “I didn’t know you 
were touchy about it.” 

“I’m not, but I do wish that men wouldn’t talk to girls 
as though one’s person and one’s small talk were all one’s 
good for.” Her tone and manner attracted more attention 
than I thought it deserved. She had obviously got angry 
over nothing. I could see in the faces watching us from 
across the table the hope that she would become angry 
enough to make a scene, and, anxious that they should not 
be gratified and that Rhoda should have ample time to 
regain her equanimity, I turned to my acquaintance of 
weddings and funerals and beat the air for something 
to say. Just then the fowl was laid before my great- 
uncle and I remarked to this lady on my right with a loud, 
clear, spontaneous voice: 

“Did you ever see such a flat-breasted turkey ?” 

No sooner had the words left my lips than I realized 
that by an absent-minded confusion of expression my 
remark was capable of being interpreted in more than one 
way. The shouts of laughter from my always ribald 
father and the politically inclined Mr. Lispenyard con¬ 
vinced me that it would be futile for me to try to extricate 
myself. Rhoda, to my amazement, whispered in my ear 
almost inaudibly: 

“Did you think it was a spring chicken?” and then 
stifled a laugh which assured me, I don’t know just why, 
that she knew that I had made a slip of the tongue. 

After dinner I sought her out and we managed to get 
a minute or two together. 

“My conversation,” I ventured timidly, “is not always 
as banal as it was at dinner.” 

“I hope not,” said Rhoda, lacing her fingers together 
and stretching the palms out as far as the arms could 


HORATIO'S STORY 


33 

reach. She seemed to be looking, not only through the 
window, but at something far beyond. 

“But you mustn’t expect too much on an occasion like 
this.” 

“I hate big dinner parties,” she said deliberately, “espe¬ 
cially when they are family affairs.” 

“They’re no harder for you than they are for me.” 

“Aren’t they though !” She lost her momentary serenity 
and was almost angry at me again. “Do you have the 
feeling that everyone is looking at you here and saying: 
‘There’s Rhoda Lispenyard, being educated by Uncle Tad, 
because her father’s no good? Nobody in that family is 
any good anyway. They’re all baggage, but they have 
to be helped out.’ Do you think you should like to feel 
that way, Lee Seebohm ?” 

“I certainly shouldn’t feel that way unless I did like it.” 

“You couldn’t help it, if you were in my circumstances,” 
she said bitterly. 

“Well,” I said with embarrassment, being moved by her 
emotion, “there are only one or two people here who know 
what Uncle Tad is doing. I can only speak for myself and 
my father, and I can assure you that neither I nor the 
Senator have any such feeling. Did you imagine that 
I looked down upon you?” 

“Yes,” she said, “I think you do.” 

“Is that why you cut me short when I remarked that 
I thought you are getting to be awfully good-looking?” 

“I hate that the worst of all. People are beginning to 
say that I’m good-looking. They rub their hands and 
chuckle over it. They think I should be hurried to the 
altar to save the drain on Uncle Thaddeus’s purse.” 

“It never occurred to me before,” I said with reflection, 
“that people figure that way. They’ll be terribly dis¬ 
appointed. The old man has fifteen nephews or nieces or 
their heirs. That means that out of every hundred that 


HORATIO'S STORY 


34 

he spends on you there will be about six dollars and sixty- 
seven cents less coming to my father or, in the event of 
his death, about two dollars and twenty-two cents less 
coming to me. Now at that rate, my dear lady, the old 
man can give you quite a little money before I begin to 
feel the pinch of it. I’m afraid that you haven’t persuaded 
me that I should be jealous.” 

Rhoda was very amused. “A mind that works like 
yours would probably never be jealous over things like 
this,” she said. 

“You mean I haven’t got sense enough.” 

“People with your kind of mind never have sense 
enough. You’re always trying to get through life on pure 
reason, and you’d have to have a terrible lot of that stuff 
to get across the street with it.” 

“Thanks awfully for the compliment. But I do think 
that nobody feels badly about you. After all it would be 
absurd of Uncle Tad not to educate you.” 

“Every penny of it will be paid back!” 

“Nonsense, you don’t think the old man knows the 
difference, do you? You mustn’t think of paying back. 
Who wants you to pay back anyway?” 

“I must pay it back some day,” she said with a definite¬ 
ness that quite overruled me. “Somehow, if not to him, 
at least to the family in some way or another. I can’t 
take it as my right, as you think I should, because I hate 
the family, hate all these parties, hate it rich and poor, 
hate my own home, my own table, my own pillow! I want 
to do it for my own sake. I want to pay them back in 
their own coin; and then I’ll be free, quite free. Do you 
understand ?” 

It is hard for me now to admit that I was thoroughly 
shocked by all this, but I was then only four and twenty 
and there is no sense in trying to persuade myself that I 
stood up against her without wincing. She was sitting in 


HORATIO’S STORY 


35 

one corner of a sofa and I in the other; her face, during 
her last remarks, became intense, her hands tugged at her 
handkerchief so that it began to tear under the strain. 
I got up, put my hands in my pockets and leaned against 
the arm of the sofa, avoiding her eyes. I thought she was 
going to cry at any moment, probably because my own 
throat was lumping on me a bit uncomfortably. 

“I hate this Boston life,” she concluded. 

“You know I thought I perceived a flash of hatred at 
the table when I was luckless enough to speak of your 
appearance. There is no reason that I can see for hatred 
like this. If you had observed my mood at dinner you 
would not have got angry then; and I’m sure that much 
of this sweeping hatred that you have for Boston and its 
unfortunate inhabitants would disappear if your observa¬ 
tion were a little fairer and a little more frequent.” At 
last I faced her again. 

“I’m afraid I made a mistake,” she said. “In trying 
to explain to you why I hate everything, I’ve only made it 
worse!” She paused a moment and her expression shifted 
from pride to apprehension and back to pride again. “I’m 
sorry I spoke to you anyway,” she added, “you’re one of 
them.” 

I glanced down the hall into the billiard room, the door 
of which was wide open. Shouts of laughter, voices speak¬ 
ing in praise or blame, and the clicking of ivory balls filled 
the air; but neither the picture nor the sound included any¬ 
thing of my own generation. My pink, bald father stood 
bending over his cue, his eloquent face absorbed in a study 
of the quality of his half-burnt cigar. Uncle Tad stood 
near him, his red eyes bright with liquor; what could be 
seen of his cheeks through his uneven beard suggested, 
by their slow movement, the secret consumption of a 
morsel of plug. Both of them seemed to be listening to 
a stout old lady with white hair, a lorgnette, and a piece 


HORATIO'S STORY 


36 

of fur over her shoulders; the black beads that com¬ 
posed the outer surface of her dress caught the light and 
reflected the swelling of her deflated bosom. The balls 
crashed; there was some talk and my father advanced to 
the table. 

Turning to Rhoda, I said: “So you think I’m one of 
them, do you ? That’s hardly a compliment after what you 
said about hating us all.” 

“Aren’t you?” she asked, almost softening. 

“I’m related to them, and tied up with them pretty 
generally socially and so far as property is concerned. 
All the same, I’m a bit the way you are, too. I’m self- 
sufficient and I like to feel elbow room.” We were about 
to be interrupted by my brother Hallam. I thought I could 
see in his eyes that he wanted to convey to me that he 
thought I was spending too much time with the Lispenyard 
girl. “Let me come and see you soon,” I added before 
he quite reached us. “I should like to have a long walk 
with you.” 

That night my father and I sat alone in the library, both 
of us trying to live down the disadvantages of having 
dined in the middle of the day when we were accustomed 
to dine in the evening. We had sat in silence for some 
time pretending to read, when my father got up and 
fetched himself a highball, following which, as an after¬ 
thought, he poured one out for me. 

“That big brother of yours,” he said, when he had 
drained his first glass, “thinks that you spent too much 
time with the Lispenyard girl to-day, but I told him that 
I don’t think you spend too much time with any woman.” 

“Did you like her, father?” I asked absent-mindedly 
as I sipped my whisky with youthful caution. Then, 
remembering to whom I was speaking, I added: “Don’t 
you think she’s getting to be a sweet-looking young 
woman ?” 


37 


HORATIO’S STORY\ 

The old gentleman always preferred the latter rendering 
of the question. He took off his glasses and put them with 
his book on the arm of his chair. “I really haven’t seen 
her/’ he said; “she doesn’t give you a chance. She’s active 
and nervous; she has no repose. There’s a sort of hostility 
about her.” 

My father, when he permitted himself to admire women, 
would do so as though they were of the plastic arts. It was 
the facade that appealed to him. I was not surprised by 
his antipathy to Rhoda’s restlessness. What struck me 
was his being vaguely aware of her rebellion. 

“She’d be a poor one in politics,” he concluded, taking 
up his book again, “there’s no give and take to her.” 

That year Rhoda and I saw a good deal of each other. 
We became fast friends. I was enjoying my fellowship 
and it was fun, on our long walks together, to see if I could 
not make Rhoda’s freshman studies more stimulating and 
interesting, and less full of profitless drudgery, than mine 
had been. Some of the prevailing methods of study that 
most people considered antiquated, I thought not antique 
at all but simply conspicuously and contemporaneously 
stupid. In these efforts, however, I made little headway, 
for the torrents of opposition were such that I was pleased 
to back out. Rhoda resented what she thought meddling 
in her affairs, and her forceful resentment has made me, to 
this day, cautious in attacking or even disturbing, in a 
personal way, the complacent and impenetrable conven¬ 
tionality of youth. 

“I’m so glad,” she said once, while we were returning 
from an escapade the nature of which I no longer remem¬ 
ber, “that I let fly at you Thanksgiving Day. It was all 
wrong of me, but if I hadn’t done it life would be so very 
different for me now.” Thus Rhoda would occasionally 
pay tribute to our friendship. She rather liked my stand¬ 
ing between the two worlds, the one she desired to flee and 


HORATIO'S STORY 


38 

the one she was not yet ready to enter; it was chiefly my 
mind to which she manifested instinctive and intolerant 
resistance. Convinced, however, of the sincerity of my 
friendship, she permitted herself to receive my attentions 
without protest. She had given up living at home and had 
a room at the college dormitory. I had hoped that this 
would appease her scorn of her relatives and what she 
called naively “Boston life”, but if anything it added to it. 
“I can never go back now,” she would say, “I can never 
live in those conditions again. When I finish at college 
I’m going West. I want to earn my own living and be free 
to do as I please.” 

“The West is a good place to be free with an ax or a 
horse,” I ventured, “but if it’s real freedom that you want 
the East has more to offer.” 

Unwilling to discuss our work together, we began dis¬ 
cussing ourselves a good deal, which led to our becoming 
preoccupied with each other. By spring I had fallen in 
love with Rhoda, and being still young and inexperienced 
I suffered the torments of hell. Later in life I have suf¬ 
fered from the same cause and had the same symptoms, 
but there was nothing as outrageous as the blindness and 
consciousness of dangerous ignorance that overwhelmed 
me at twenty-four. To Rhoda this was incomprehensible. 
She was not ready to be loved. She wanted companion¬ 
ship and admiration. She liked to startle me, to fill me 
with awe, to keep me thrilled by her vitality. 

One May evening we walked slowly toward the country 
through Brattle Street, Cambridge. The lilacs were out in 
profusion and their soft fragrance carried through the 
damp air. 

“They asked me to-day whether I should accept an offer 
to join the staff at Arlington when I’m through with the 
fellowship,” I said. “I suppose I can count on Arlington 
for a few years anyway.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


39 


“Why do you stay there?” she asked. 

“I like it, Rhoda—philosophy, I mean.” 

“I suppose there should be a few philosophers in the 
world,” she said hopelessly. 

“Fiddlesticks!” I said. “Why should there? For people 
to laugh at them ? I want you to know me as I really am, 
Rhoda. I don’t really care whether philosophy or philoso¬ 
phers are kindly permitted to exist by the divine grace of 
an industrial civilization or not. I do it because I like it, 
because I like nothing better. I despise the way every trifle 
nowadays has to be examined to see whether it’s of value 
to the state. I’m going on with my studies because I love 
them, and I don’t much care whether I benefit or harm 
anyone by doing it. You, who are forever grabbing for 
freedom, should certainly understand that!” 

“I don’t, Lee,” she said. “I demand freedom only to be 
able to do what I think is right, and I think it’s impera¬ 
tively right to be of some use in the world.” 

“I don’t care whether I am or not,” I said. 

“Then why do you figure on staying at the University? 
Why don’t you be a philosopher and just sit?” 

It was a fair question, difficult to answer. “It’s a com¬ 
promise of a sort, my staying on. Sometimes I think it's 
low of me because I don’t really believe in it, but there are 
some advantages that I think justify it, if it needs any 
justification. I know of no other way to pursue my work 
and at the same time keep in touch with people. I prefer 
not teaching, but the disintegrating effect upon my per¬ 
sonal character that might result from complete isolation 
would be more than I could stand. It’s an absurd state 
of affairs, but I don’t suppose there’s a single philosopher 
in the United States who is not a professor of it. It’s the 
only way a philosopher can purchase respectability.” 

“Well, what’s the difference?” 

“The difference to me is that I like respectability.” 


4 0 


HORATIO’S STORY 


“I loathe it,” she said scornfully. 

Such a difference of opinion was characteristic of the 
friendship that we had at that time. Rhoda’s disgust with 
life as it surrounded her in girlhood was sweeping, but in 
her judgments upon particular matters she was conven¬ 
tional to a fault. We walked along in silence and presently 
came to some lots at the end of the street; breaking 
through these a short distance, we found a stout rock 
beneath some trees. Here I persuaded Rhoda to sit down 
on my coat, and I squatted upon the grass. 

“Rhoda,” I said, “you must know that I’ve fallen in 
love with you.” 

“I was beginning to be suspicious of it,” she admitted. 

“I want you to marry me.” 

“I don’t want to marry you, Lee; or anybody else for 
that matter.” 

“Should you consent to marry if you loved me?” I asked. 

“I doubt it,” was all she said. 

“Why not?” 

“I don’t want to marry for years and years, probably 
never. First of all I want to pay back what I owe to the 
family, and then I want to look around for myself.” 

“You owe nothing, Rhoda. There is nothing to keep 
you from finishing at college, and your imaginary debts 
could be very easily paid, if that means anything to your 
conscience.” 

“No, I shouldn’t be able to marry you. You’re so 
funny!” She seized my head in her hands and kissed my 
hair. Then, pressing me to her, she leaned over and kissed 
my forehead. She was touched by my emotion. “You’re 
a sweet thing,” she added. “I might be able to love you, 
but marry you—never !” 

I took her in my arms and kissed her. Later it seemed 
to me that that was the moment when I began loving 


HORATIO’S STORY 


4i 

Rhoda. It took me some time before I could control my 
voice sufficiently to speak. 

“You are going to make life hard for yourself. You 
might find that in trying to make life dearer for me you 
made it happier for yourself. I should try to do the right 
thing for you, Rhoda,” I concluded. 

“I know, I know, we should be like all the others! It’s 
too awful to think of ! Besides, you don’t really love me!” 

“You’re the only girl I ever thought I loved. What 
do you know about love anyway? You’ve never experi¬ 
enced it.” 

“You’re not ambitious enough, Lee!” This came quite 
unexpectedly. The irrelevancy of the remark was strik¬ 
ing to me even in my ecstatic condition; and I laughed, 
laughed very heartily, and my amusement, relieving as it 
did the tension of the moment, expanded beyond control. 

“You’re not,” she shouted over the racket that I made. 
“You know you’re not!” I stopped laughing and saw that 
I had hurt her feelings. 

“I’m sorry I laughed, Rhoda. I didn’t mean to. What 
I really wanted to do was to cry. It was quite hysterical 
of me. Please forgive me.” 

“I meant what I said,” she said bitterly. 

“Well, the objects of ambition, as most men and women 
see them—and that’s what you meant, my dear—do not 
attract me.” 

“And you suffer from poverty of emotion.” 

“Are you so much richer yourself ? What have you to 
offer in the way of emotion?” 

“But you’re the best friend a girl ever had.” 

“Well then, let’s walk back.” It was as unpleasant a 
walk as I can remember. The lilacs, adding to the sweet¬ 
ness and softness of the evening, and the lights of so 
many distant homes set back just far enough from the 


42 HORATIO’S STORY 

road for privacy, seemod to say at every step: “We are 
not for you.” 

As we neared Cambridge, Rhoda took my arm; her 
hand slipped gently into mine. “I’ve been horrid to you,” 
she said softly, “and you've been so terribly good to me. 
I don’t want you to think that I don’t respect you, because 
I do, very much indeed. I think you’re an awfully fine 
man, but I don’t know why I think so.” 

I said nothing and we walked on in silence until we 
reached the place where we usually said good-bye. She 
took her arm away and resting her hand on the little gate 
that marked the path to the house where she stopped, she 
looked me full in the face. 

“I think, Lee,” she said with deliberation, “that you 
represent, to me, the triumph of mind over matter!” 

I saw very little of Rhoda before my wedding, which 
occurred about three months after this meeting. Then, 
as is usual after a man marries, I found it impossible to 
preserve an old friendship and she dropped out of my life 
completely. Through the accidents of misfortune and 
unhappiness, and my natural propensities for aloofness 
and solitude, I lost track of Rhoda for a number of years. 
When we did meet again it was hard for me to overcome 
my reminiscent impression of her, a girl of eighteen, still 
with a suggestion of rawboned childhood, but with the 
promise of a beautiful womanhood, a girl full of pride and 
resentment, eager, ungenerous, unsympathetic, unemotional 
except in hate. She was a girl who never forgave the evil 
she found about her and refused to compromise with it, 
whose highest ambition was liberty and the ability to raise 
a small sum of money that would ease her mind of the 
humiliation of not having sprung into the world a free and 
independent woman. 


CHAPTER III 


No matter how a man may drift away from the asso¬ 
ciations of his youth, some experiences, habits, or customs 
drag him back to it forcibly and unexpectedly. Funerals 
have that faculty, and weddings; but, while I can refuse 
invitations to the latter, it is difficult not to do one’s family 
homage on the occasion of death, and more than difficult 
for me because, now that the clergyman is no longer as 
fashionable as he once was, I find that the professor of 
philosophy, especially when he occupies a sanctified chair 
sucK as mine, is not infrequently chosen as funeral orator. 
I refuse most, but I must admit that I feel a drear pleasure 
now and then in the few where I do assist, though I am 
not addicted to funerals neurotically as was Gladstone, for 
instance, whose passion for them seems only to have been 
satisfied by his own. Perhaps the real reason why I like 
them is that I never speak more than thirty minutes, can 
say about what I please, and have the satisfaction of an 
audience that never heckles, that offers no grimacing faces, 
that asks no questions in order to exploit its own clever¬ 
ness, and never tries to find out what the lecturer doesn’t 
know. My text is always the same, “What is man that 
thou art mindful of him ?”, and I try to attain a sonorous¬ 
ness of prose that would seem affected in a lecturer on my 
own subject. 

In 1908 I addressed the mourners of the late Mrs. Amos 
Lispenyard, whose husband had died in 1906. Missing 
Rhoda, I asked my brother Hallam, who had managed the 
old lady’s estate, why she had not come East, and I was 

43 


44 


HORATIO'S STORY 


shocked to hear that she had pneumonia. A month later 
she wrote, chiefly to thank me for my letter, and I assumed 
that she was quite well again. 

My brother told me that Mrs. Lispenyard’s last years 
had been painful, but that the assistance that she had 
received from Rhoda had helped very materially. And 
Rhoda, he said, had met her mother’s debts with a prompt¬ 
ness that amounted to heroism when considered in the light 
of her slender means. 

The following year I met the family again, this time at 
the funeral of my great-uncle Thaddeus Collamore. On 
receiving a copy of his will—he kindly left me his library, 
which, I must say, gratified me chiefly as a mark of 
esteem—I was pleased to see that he had thrown over the 
family tradition of equal distribution and left the bulk of 
his estate to my cousin Rhoda. Though it did not reach the 
appraisals that had been made in the imaginations of his 
nieces and nephews for the previous quarter century, it 
was a sizable legacy, one that would permit Rhoda to live 
pretty much as she pleased and travel where she liked. 

The winter following, Rhoda came East, and I met her 
for the first time in seven years. The circumstances of 
our coming together were involved in a good deal of non¬ 
sense which can best be explained by beginning at the 
bottom of it. Absurd as it may seem, the story actually 
begins with a few trifling incidents proceeding from the 
way in which I chance to go about my business habitually, 
and I shall have to take up what would appear to be a 
digression naturally to discover these small matters that 
finally brought us together again. 

My method of procedure in Phil. 163a (Religion and 
Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century) varies, of course, 
with the number and capacity of my students. While still 
a lecturer in 1904,1 gave that course for the first time, and 
one hundred and fifty ladies and gentlemen sat for it. 


HORATIO'S STORY 


45 

Knowing only too well the standard of scholarship and 
character at the university, the numerical strength with 
which my call was answered dismayed me. It could only 
mean that people thought me an easy-going sort. Of 
course it would have been simple to maintain this popu¬ 
larity and even stiffen up a bit year by year by encouraging 
this class. For the tutoring schools could have counted on 
seventy-five out of my hundred and fifty, and devoted 
their master minds to priming my weaker students for 
examinations. The tutors can get boys ready for any ex¬ 
amination in two weeks, except the first, and I therefore 
brought this first class like lambs to the slaughter. I gave 
one A, which was by chance given to Mr. O’Flarity Child, 
of whom we shall hear more anon, six B’s, twenty-seven 
C’s, two D’s, and to the remaining one hundred and four¬ 
teen, a bare'-faced F. 

This created something of a scandal. In fact it was the 
only time that the president saw fit to remonstrate with 
me. He urged with some justice that it was not the part 
of the youngest lecturer at the university to start raising 
the academic standards with a guillotine; secretly, how¬ 
ever, he was pleased with what I had done, and I had 
accomplished my purpose. It was never necessary for me 
to offend the authorities in this particular again. 

The next year I had only ten students, and as I go on 
I average about twelve in each course. They are usually 
the best students at the university; they never prime for 
their examinations at the tutoring schools, and they almost 
always give presentable papers. I am usually thought to 
be a man of incredible severity and peculiarity, and the 
professional tutors guarantee no one that he may take my 
courses with safety. Whatever the benefits of this system 
may be, it has one regret for me. Many of the best 
students are wretchedly poor and work for scholarships. 
Now O’Flarity Child is the only man on record to get 


46 


HORATIO’S STORY 


an A from me, and these stipend hunters avoid my courses 
because they fear that I might wreck their material for¬ 
tunes. I may thus have lost some of the most inspiring 
students that come to us. 

In the year of which I speak, 1910* I had a full baker’s 
dozen of courageous souls. I lectured to them formally 
twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays at two-thirty. 
Sometimes we met on Fridays for discussions, and it hap¬ 
pened that this year I chanced to be slightly interested in 
phonetics. Going over my cards in September I noticed 
that each student came from a different state, and in order 
to sharpen my own observation I referred to each student 
geographically. “Will the lady from Wisconsin please tell 
us, in as few words as possible, what was meant by ‘the 
enlightenment’?” Or, “Will the gentleman from Georgia 
please define for us 'religious fanaticism’, assuming of 
course that the phrase has a meaning in his estimation?” 
“But the lady from Rhode Island objects,” and so on. 

These conferences, however, I reduced to a minimum 
and toward the end of the semester gave but one in the 
course of two months. They were good for me but they 
bore the students, most of whom are by nature neither 
talkative nor argumentative. It does not interest me to 
purge their minds more than once a year, but in order 
to give them some notion of what they shall have to con¬ 
tend against on that occasion, I give, at the mid-years, a 
brief written examination of about four or five hours. 
I criticize these papers fully and return them with ex¬ 
tremely low grades but with the encouraging reflection 
that it is merely a practice quiz, not a matter of record, 
and that there is nothing to prevent any student from 
doing creditably in the course unless it is his natural limi¬ 
tation or his complacent lack of ambition. 

As I said, that year I did not once refer to a student by 
name, having set my heart on learning to recognize each 


HORATIO’S STORY 


4 7 

by the precise sound of his local dialect, and in order to 
complete the experiment I made a point of not removing 
my reading glasses at lectures, which had the effect of 
rendering me blind for all practical purposes. 

This affectation, it is only fair to say, had a secondary 
cause. The year previous two blase students, one a lady 
and one a gentleman, had a depressing effect upon my dis¬ 
course by their clever play of facial expression. It is my 
failing perhaps that little things sometimes distress me out 
of proportion. The young lady would gaze adoringly 
upon me with calf-like eyes, heaving her bosom the while. 
How the pathos of those eyes did insult the human spirit! 
Whenever I made an effort to lighten the burden of my 
abstraction with a concrete figure of speech or a sugges¬ 
tion of humour, she would respond with such contortions 
of hysterical laughter that I feared for her balance. The 
youth, on the other hand, looked at me with a contemp¬ 
tuous tolerance; he gave me to understand by his elevated 
eyebrows and blinking lids that for him to follow my mind 
was only difficult because of the vast tediousness that it 
perforce involved. At least once during the course of each 
lecture he would knit his brows, purse his lips, and turn 
his face deliberately to the windows. He would then 
appear to remain lost in thought for ten or fifteen minutes, 
giving an occasional glance of sharp annoyance at the 
lecturer. Then he would relax, give me his attention, and 
regard me placidly. The eyebrows would shoot up agaih 
and a smile would steal over his lips. 

The simplicity with which he would pick up the threads 
of my argument seemed to annoy me quite as much as the 
young lady’s extraordinary mixture of intelligence and 
imbecility. He gave me a brilliant examination which 
proved on minute study to be something of a hoax. In 
the extent of his knowledge and the expression of it I had 
no complaint; but I found his logic vile both in theory and 


HORATIO’S STORY 


48 

practice, and I took great pleasure in applying my rule 
that students are supposed to know their rudiments of 
logic before they come to me. That is, I explained, what 
Phil. 13 and Phil. 26 are for. On failing he went to the 
dean and remonstrated in vain. He alleged that for the 
university to accept the same fees for my courses as others 
was to accept money under false pretenses, and that send¬ 
ing out catalogues with my courses noted down involved 
the offense of using the mails to defraud. If he had 
suggested as much on his paper, I might have credited him 
with enough logic to carry him over the no-man's land 
between F and D. The hysterical young lady, I must 
admit, came through. She knew logic and despised it; 
and, working herself into a pitch of excitement, produced 
on her examination paper an eloquent assertion of the 
superiority of the mystic mind, one of the best I have ever 
read. 

All this, however, is mentioned merely to explain how, 
as a playful experiment, partly to defend myself against 
unpleasant personalities and partly to learn to judge 
accents better, I happened to affect reading glasses for 
lecturing and to refer to my students geographically. In 
going over the practice examinations at the mid-years, 
I had recourse to the roll for the first time, and great was 
my surprise in finding that Rhoda Lispenyard made one 
of my serious-minded baker's dozen. 

I was at home in Belmont when I made the discovery. 
There was no use in telephoning because I did not have 
any idea where she lived; so I wrote a hasty note, begging 
her pardon profusely for not having recognized her, and 
asking if I might have lunch with her the next day. This 
I sent with my chauffeur to the university office, and 
asked him to bring me back her address. 

I found myself seized with excitement quite against my 
will, and of a sudden possessed of an unruly temperament 


HORATIO'S STORY 


49 


wholly foreign to my nature. I didn’t like my coat but 
must ring for my smoking jacket in the middle of the 
afternoon; when Jenkins brought my tea it appealed to 
me no more than so much dishwater; and I must have 
whisky and soda. Long before dinner I was thoroughly 
upset. 

Finally I went back to my desk and pulled out her paper. 
I carried it over to the fireplace and sat down to read it 
again. I persuaded myself that it was childish of me to be 
excited, that I had no love for Rhoda, that I made game 
of myself. But she was the only woman who had any real 
place in my life, and the sudden change from reminiscence 
to reality was in itself enough to quicken my pulse. I had 
often wondered, in the six or seven years previous, in what 
way my life would have differed if she had accepted me. 

I had never ceased being fond of her, though I certainly 
did not love her as I once did. One thing was fairly cer¬ 
tain, Rhoda had exerted a considerable influence on my 
life, and one of such permanence that I do not see how it 
can ever be effaced. It is my belief, and I state this only 
as a matter of personal opinion that I do not know how to 
go about proving, that when a man’s first love is a vivid 
affair, he goes through life feeling attracted to women 
who have some line, colour, form, some physical or even 
mental characteristic that belonged to the first. All the 
women to whom I have been attracted have had something 
that has drawn me back to Rhoda. And infallibly I quarrel 
with them as I did with her. There is always the resis¬ 
tance, the demand for freedom, the wish to be let alone, 
the desire to go on with life uninterrupted by me. There 
was in my picture of Rhoda that night something that had 
not toned down; I thought that her feeling for her family, 
her great aloofness, her vast pride, and her emotion that 
knew no softening, all had been so strong as to be perma¬ 
nent. She had been capable of cruelty, but capable also 


5 0 HORATIO’S STORY 

of much courage and self-reliance, decision and force of 
character. 

I knew that those qualities that I had admired in Rhoda 
were the qualities that even then attracted me in other 
women, and the odd fatality in it was the fact that 
the women I have loved have never cared two straws 
for me. Only the feeble-minded and erratic, such as the 
girl who distressed me so the year before, were in any way 
attracted by me. 

With Rhoda’s paper still in my hands, my reflection was 
cut short by the impulse to read it again. “Here,” I kept 
saying to myself, “here in your hands is the girl you were 
willing to marry.” But my reading of it a second time 
did not give me any satisfaction. 

We have at the university a large number of Western 
spinsters, teachers by profession, who come to us, I regret 
to say, for higher degrees. They don’t really like to study 
but they do it industriously as a matter of business. These 
girls, and there are plenty of men like them, are numerous 
enough to be recognized as a type here, for they have many 
traits in common. Without knowing whose paper it was, 
I had set Rhoda down as one of these. Her premises were 
too broad, and her failure to restrict or qualify them had 
made her conclusions platitudinous and dull. Her interest, 
too, was excessively pedagogical; it had no delight in 
knowledge; what made a strong appeal was the mere act 
of passing information from one book or lecture to an¬ 
other lecture or pupil. This is what I had written down 
on the back: 

If on your final examination you take as much effort in 
trying to give plausible answers, as in this you have taken in 
trying to say what you wrongly thought I wished you to say, 
you may get a B instead of a C. The particulars from which 
I generalize are noted in the context. 

You are sound enough but you are so broad that you become 
innocuous r. I think I perceive a dash for freedom. Unfor¬ 
tunately it is mostly dash, and it collides with your desire 


HORATIO’S STORY 


51 


to pacify the instructor. The consequence is that I find a 
little nose-thumbing between the lines. Be as independent as 
you please, but there is no merit in throwing dirt upon me if 
you are going to admit the justice of my views of the 
Eighteenth Century. 

Among some qualities that I consider highly commendable, 
your mind has two characteristics that I think worthy of your 
serious attention. The first is your conventionality. Do you 
use Mr. Shay's excellent pamphlet, How to Pass Any Course 
of Study ? Secondly, your mind has the brute force, vigour, 
sweep, and exquisite impatience of a well-bred horse. Your 
paper makes me feel as though I were one of the wise men 
of the East, traditionally thought to have set out slowly upon 
the backs of camels to do homage at the cradle of Jesus 
Christ. Should you have taken a motorcycle? Let us have a 
little' less sand in our eyes. Suppleness, deftness, precision, 
infinite patience, sensibility to logically constructed state¬ 
ments: these are qualities of mind that I should like to see 
you cultivate, as long as you do not confuse them with 
qualities of character. They are what the decadent East 
should offer the virile West. 

L. S. 

My second impression did not differ enough for me to 
add anything to what I had written. It was nothing bril¬ 
liant and nothing damning; a bit too breezily schoolish, 
perhaps. After all, she had been teaching for nearly seven 
years, and that had very likely meant privation to her in 
keeping alive her interest in subjects of this kind. Cer¬ 
tainly it had required a good deal of courage for her to step 
into Phil. 163a; and the practice quiz seemed to indicate 
a real, if not altogether original, interest in what was being 
considered. Perhaps my criticism was a bit too strenuous; 
doubtless a spoken word or two would put a smile into it. 

I put my boy to bed and then came down to dinner. 
The Boston Transcript was my only guest. Greggory 
returned and reported Miss Lispenyard out, but I was 
presently roused out of a nap by a telephone call. 
“Professor Seebohm?” the voice asked. 

“Mr. Seebohm, ,, I replied. 

“Rhoda Lispenyard/’ 

“Really? Are my apologies accepted?” 

“Of course they are.” 


52 


HORATIO'S STORY 


“Shall I expect you to-morrow ?” 

“Expect the lady from Wisconsin.” I could hear her 
merry laughter. 

“I’ll call for you at one.” 

“Please do.” 

Rhoda had taken rooms in a pleasant dwelling not far 
from the university, and I saw her emerge from the door 
just as we drove up. As she hurried to meet me I thought 
I observed the same restlessness, the same nervous eager¬ 
ness. She was far more attractive than she had been as a 
girl; her eyes were more determined than ever, and they 
had lost a wistful sadness that I remembered about them. 
She wore a beautiful squirrel coat and a brilliant green 
sport cap. 

“Rhoda!” I cried as I jumped down. 

“Lee,” she said, taking my hand, “the only friend I have 
in the East, and I thought you spurned me!” 

“Why didn’t you let me know that you were here?” 
I asked. “I should have thrust myself at your feet at 
once.” I signified to Greggory that we were going back 
to Belmont; Rhoda and I got in, and I slammed the door. 

“I was in town a month without hearing from you and 
then I took your course, thinking it would revive an old 
acquaintance. Then what did you do but call me ‘the lady 
from Wisconsin’! And after that what could I be ex¬ 
pected to do? I swear I haven’t been able to catch your 
eye once in thirty-five lectures. But I must admit that the 
course isn’t as bad as I feared it would be!” 

“I haven’t looked them over yet this year, Rhoda. But 
I ought to have recognized your voice in spite of your 
affected Wisconsin dialect. Why didn’t you talk your old 
Boston to me?” 

“I hate it!” 

“Well, it was terribly decent of you to stay in my 
course!” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


53 


“I should have been a poor sport to quit.” 

On the way out we talked of family matters with the 
avidity of thoroughly responsible domestic souls. We be¬ 
moaned the death of kings and we summed up the general 
condition of the family with criticism untempered with 
mercy. “You see,” I said, “I haven’t met a soul since 
Uncle Tad’s funeral, and I had no idea that you were 
here. Did Hallam know ?” 

“Of course.” 

“It was brotherly of him not to tell me, wasn’t it?” 

“Forgive my saying it, Lee, but I find you in just about 
the same position that I was in when I left for the West. 
Only instead of going into hysterics of hate and pulling 
up your stakes, you retire in state to Belmont.” 

“I don’t hate them, Rhoda, I’m a family man.” 

“Rubbish, you’re a hermit. You never see a soul. I have 
it from Hallam.” 

“What does he know, the jackass?” 

“Bravo!” cried Rhoda. We were at the door. 

Something in my manner that morning must have be¬ 
trayed my anxiety when I ordered lunch for two. Jenkins 
ran out bare-headed to open the door of the machine, 
something that I have many times forbidden him to do, as 
he is now well over seventy; and my son stood ready to 
open the door as we mounted the steps of the porch. 

“I want you to meet my boy, Rhoda,” I said, taking off 
my things. “Went, this is your cousin, Rhoda, of whom 
you have heard me speak.” 

“Lee,” shouted my guest, “Lee, I never knew!” 

“Not Lee,” I said, “Wentworth is his name.” 

Rhoda kissed the boy, much to his happiness, before he 
had time to say a word. “Why didn’t you tell me that 
you had a boy, Lee?” I think there were tears in her 
eyes; she held Wentworth to her for a moment in order 
that he should not perceive them. 


54 HORATIO’S STORY 

"I didn’t know you’d be interested,” I said with embar¬ 
rassment. Wentworth, released, took a few steps back¬ 
ward and gazed upon my guest with silent awe while she, 
recovered from her momentary shock, looked at me with 
amazement bordering upon disgust. I felt that I had been 
perfectly natural in not speaking of the child. Rhoda, 
flaring up with her ready hostility, took the fact as though 
she had suddenly revealed me as a bank robber. Went¬ 
worth, as usual, stepped into the breach. 

“Father,” he said fairly cautiously, “I wish you’d bring 
a lady home with you more often.” 

“The darling!” Rhoda exclaimed. 

“I’ll do the best I can for you,” I said. 

Jenkins announced lunch. “Master Wentworth has 
been served, sir,” he added. 

“Well, it’s time for your nap, Went. I’ll see you at 
three o’clock and hear your lessons, and you may see 
Cousin Rhoda again before she goes.” My son scrambled 
up the stairs without a word. “Come,” I said to Rhoda, 
“we’ll have lunch in the library; I haven’t used the dining 
room six times since I moved in.” 

“He’s a fine boy,” said Rhoda, furtively trying to catch 
another tear. 

“I think so, too,” I admitted. “But I didn’t mean to 
shock you. I thought that it was generally known that 
I had a son. You see, I hate to tell people that I have the 
finest boy on earth and then have them think that he’s 
just an average boy when they meet him. That’s the only 
reason I have for not talking much about him. Don’t you 
think that parents talking on the subject of their children 
are a bit tedious ? I do. Why were you so moved ?” 

“Out of pity, I suppose. I had a sudden revulsion of 
feeling.” 

“You think him piteous, do you ?” I asked. 

“Yes,” she said. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


55 

The soup was laid upon the table. I waited a moment 
for Jenkins to go out of the room, and then I asked: 

“Now tell me why this perfectly healthy child of seven 
strikes you as an object for pity. Why are you touched 
by the sight of him?” 

“He looked pathetic,” was all she could think of to say. 

“Takes after his father ?” 

“There's something in that,” she admitted with a laugh. 
“He needs warmth. You're too cold to bring up a child.” 

“Really? You always thought me cold, didn’t you, 
Rhoda ?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, given the personality that I’ve got, I do the best 
I know how for him.” 

“I'm afraid I've been a bit nasty. I don't believe you 
know how to take care of a child. The idea of it was too 
horrible to me! A boy like that shouldn’t have a nap in 
the afternoon, for example.” 

“It's a good system, and does him no harm. It makes 
him fresh for his lessons and it gives me a very quiet hour 
after lunch.” 

“It’s just too awful!” she said, and I felt that what 
really troubled her mind was that the boy had no mother. 
“Doesn’t he ever play with the other little boys in the 
street ?” 

“Not yet. He will by and by. But, Rhoda, if you like 
that boy I wish you would see a lot of him. I should like 
him to have the influence of a woman.” 

“I'd love to.” 

“Perhaps I can delegate some of his instruction to you; 
we’ll see how it works out. Meanwhile let’s go on with 
our lunch, and please tell me about yourself and what you 
did in the West.” 

“Taught school. Taught in a young ladies' finishing 
school. It was ghastly!” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


56 

“Not really?” 

“No? Well, you should try it.” 

“They finish them up without my subject, don’t they?” 

“They don’t finish them up, Lee; they tie them up, bind 
them up like the feet of Chinese women.” 

“I wish we could pick up where we left off, Rhoda. 
Can’t you give me a story of it? As I remember it you 
went West on a free and independent excursion.” 

“And because I wanted to get away and start paying 
my debts.” 

“Was there much in the idea that freedom is to be had 
in a far country?” 

“Well, I paid my debt and gained my freedom, but I 
gained it only at its own cost. You see, I merely shifted 
everything from Boston to Shady Hill, Wisconsin. The 
real freedom was the act of getting there. Once there 
I had to sell out to make a living.” 

“I was afraid of it,” I said. 

“You have no idea how horrible it is out there. The 
solitude is appalling. There was no social life whatever. 
There was no opportunity to escape from the most absurd 
philistinism. You had to lock yourself in your room. And 
my work made me so tired that when I did lock myself in, 
it was usually to correct papers or throw myself into bed.” 

“I have known,” I said, “that teaching in small, private 
schools may be damned unpleasant.” 

“This job certainly was.” 

“And now,” I asked, “what now, Rhoda?” 

“After my mother died my one idea was to hold down 
that job until I had saved enough money to go somewhere 
and study, or take a year off any way I wanted. Then 
when Uncle Tad’s estate was settled there was no longer 
any need for me to hold down that job, so T tore up my 
Stakes and came East. I want to take a year to rest and 


HORATIO’S STORY 57 

study; and then I’m going to decide what I want to do, 
and go ahead and do it.” 

“You always were a determined sort, Rhoda. Have 
you any idea what you want to do? That night that we 
parted you seemed to have a clearness of vision about 
yourself, and I wonder if you have that still.” 

“I did see that night. I’m glad that I did what I did. 
Not that a lot hasn’t happened that I didn’t foresee. If it 
had occurred to me that a teacher in a finishing school 
could sink to the level of abject slavery, and become 
illiterate through isolation, I’d probably not have had the 
courage to do it. I never dreamed that a woman like me 
would cling to a job that she thought despicable through 
fear of losing it.” 

“I don’t think it’s altogether fair to be so severe on 
yourself, Rhoda,” I said. “You had somebody else to 
consider; you were living hand-to-mouth, and you really 
couldn’t be expected to be independent.” 

“I look upon the whole affair as a failure, as the first 
great failure of my life. Now I want to start in all over 
again.” 

We had finished lunch and amused ourselves looking 
over the room while Jenkins cleared the table. Rhoda lit 
a cigarette and ran about the room with childish pleasure. 
“You know,” she said, “I like this ever so much more than 
the Senator’s.” 

“Why ?” I asked.. 

She didn’t know, unless it was that Beacon Hill houses, 
and I suppose my father’s was characteristic of them, 
reminded her too much of the setting of her childhood, 
whereas the Belmont house seemed to Rhoda the embodi¬ 
ment of myself without the trappings of a whole family 
tradition. We went on talking aimlessly. It gave me so 
much pleasure to be with Rhoda again that I sat listening 
to her for some time without paying any attention to what 


S 8 HORATIO’S STORY 

she was saying'. I wondered why it was that I had never 
found another friend with whom I could so enjoy myself. 
Suddenly I became aware that she was asking me a 
question. 

“Do you find me more mature ?” she repeated. 

“Mature? In what way, Rhoda?” 

“Why, in character, of course.” 

It was hard to answer. I had just been reflecting on 
how much she resembled the young girl I had known. 

“It’s so easy to say yes or no. What do you understand 
by maturity, Rhoda?” I asked. 

“Am I any older, Lee?” 

“Seven years,” I said, counting on my fingers. 

“How do you define maturity, Professor ?” 

“Rhoda, if you ever call me that again!” 

“Define it, and I never will.” 

“I think that people begin to attain maturity when they 
scrap one set of values and one set of aims or aspirations, 
and take up others, as a result of some experience. I think 
that’s what ‘putting away childish things’ means, and of 
course I exclude any imitation. Imitators are always 
children.” 

Rhoda stood straight in front of me, her hands in the 
broad pockets of her skirt; her cigarette, hanging out of 
the corner of her mouth, seemed to be a part of her roguish 
smile. “Now that we’ve learned our lessons,” she said, 
“do you, or don’t you think that I’m more mature?” 

“Not especially. I think you may be nearer to it than 
ever before, but I think that fundamentally you’re about 
the same. Isn’t that so?” 

“I don’t know. I was asking in good faith.” 

“By the way, your paper is there. I wrote the criticism 
before I knew who you were, and you might look at it 
while we’re talking of maturity.” 

I went over to the desk and found it on the top of the 


HORATIO’S STORY 


59 

pile. Giving it to Rhoda, I watched her as she read my 
remarks. Her eyes fell almost immediately, probably 
when she perceived the grade. Then she got flushed, got 
an g r y> hut read on. Finally she threw the paper down. 

“Well,” she said with tension, “I’d do better not to say 
anything about it now. I accepted your invitation as a 
friend, and there isn’t much sense in taking up an official 
matter right now. But wait till your next lecture; I’ll tell 
you what I think of this after your next lecture.” 

This loss of faith shocked me. I very rarely experience 
hurt feelings, but I think this was one of the few times 
when that happened. I should not have mistaken a show 
of temper for a loss of faith, but I did. 

“Rhoda,” I said, “if you want to say anything about 
that paper, please say it here and now. I don’t think 
there’s anything insulting in it, and I certainly hope 
that there’s nothing unjust about it. If you’re going to 
learn anything in my course you will have to learn it 
through antagonism, not through sympathy. I’m not teach¬ 
ing in a finishing school; I’m lecturing to adults, and their 
minds can develop better in opposition to mine. Otherwise 
there’s no excuse for not going to the library and digging 
it all out by research. But remember this, Rhoda, and I’m 
talking to you now as the Herr-Professor-Doctor and not 
as a friend, that this antagonism must be a struggle of 
minds and not of personalities. If you want a struggle 
of personalities I’ll go right to the dean and ask him to 
give you credit for a half course. What I want to do is 
to get the men and women who study under me to develop 
as much intellectual resistance as they have emotional 
resistance.” 

“It seems to me,” she said hotly, “that you treat me as 
though I were a child, only you express your feelings as no 
one who had any understanding of the principles of educa¬ 
tion ever would to a child.” That was all she could say 


60 HORATIO'S STORY 

for the moment; the tears welled, and she tried to keep 
them back. 

“Wait a moment,” I said, “you think your case is special. 
You think I have treated you with particular severity and 
contempt. Let’s look at some of the others without 
noticing their names.” 

I took up the pile and chose one at random. “Look at 
this: ‘Please in the future listen to my lectures and leave 
your notebooks at home. Otherwise you may, on the final 
and only examination, make me feel that I cannot give 
myself a passing grade/ Please take one at random, 
Rhoda.” I held out the papers like a stack of cards. At 
first I thought she was going to refuse, but then she slowly 
put her hand out and snatched one. 

“ ‘You have great poverty of expression/ ” she read, 
“ ‘which makes it hard for me to comprehend what you 
mean to say. After much effort I reach this opinion, that 
your obscurity is due largely to timidity. You snow your¬ 
self in with such expressions as “it seems to me”, “in my 
opinion”, “I believe”, and “it is barely possible”, until you 
convince yourself of the futility of your mental opera¬ 
tions. It is therefore not astonishing that you fail to 
convince me/ 

“It’s extraordinary, but there may be an idea in it that 
I never thought of. Do you expect these people to be 
helped by this kind of thing?” 

“Say you’re not angry any more.” 

“I’m not,” Rhoda admitted, smiling again, “but I think 
you’re a great fool.” 

Wentworth was coming down the stairs with his books 
and paper. He walked seriously into the library and re¬ 
garded us with patient curiosity. I asked Rhoda to watch 
us go through with our lessons, and just before we had 
finished, I asked her to go on while I went to the garage 
to get the machine ready to take her back to Arlington. 


HORATIO’S STORY\ 61 

That evening when I saw Went put to bed, I asked him 
how he liked reciting his lessons to Rhoda. 

“I don’t like it at all,” he said; “that’s your work, father.” 
This remark came with the finality that prevented me from 
sending him to school. 

“Well,” I asked, “how do you like Cousin Rhoda when 
she is not hearing your lessons?” 

“Too magic,” he said, sleepily. 


CHAPTER IV 


Shortly after this meeting I had the courage to remove 
my reading spectacles and began feeling more intimate 
with the membership of Phil. 163a. They were a good- 
looking crew, and it gave me pleasure to observe what I 
could of their reactions, for there was no one of the type 
disconcerting to me by virtue of intemperate response. 
When I returned the papers, which I have already dis¬ 
cussed parenthetically at too great length, consternation 
was epidemic. Most of the students shared the feeling of 
Miss Lispenyard and struggled with their tempers for a 
week or two. A number of theories sprang up to account 
for the criticism that I had put forth with so much pain, 
and there seemed to be two principal schools of thought. 
If I judged rightly by their whispering and expressions 
the stronger of these by far held that I did not really 
mean what I said. My criticism, they thought, had been 
composed for its own sake; I liked my eccentricity. This 
side took aid and comfort from Rhoda, and I recall reflect¬ 
ing that it was singularly like a relative and the friend of 
one’s youth to refuse to take a man seriously. Those 
of the other camp thought me a hunter, bent upon filling 
my bag, more willing to play fair than not, but, rather 
than come home empty-handed, ready to ensnare my 
students into philosophical error by foul means. They 
evidently thought that my criticism was meant to frighten 
them out of their senses so that I might flunk them with a 
clear conscience. 

In my estimation that particular class boasted of not one 
first-rate student; and it is only just to add that, in such 

62 


HORATIO’S STORY. 


63 

of their opinions as ever became known to me, none of 
them thought that that course boasted a first-rate in- 
structor. 

Of some of Miss LispenyarcTs colleagues, I have a dim 
remembrance. There was an emaciated, wizened old 
gentleman of twenty-two, Havemeyer Jones, alleged to be 
precocious, if you please, by the head of the department 
of Indie Philology. Jones evidently felt the presence of 
women in the course as a gratuitous and distracting 
imposition, and he treated them all to an ostentatious con¬ 
descension, except Miss Lispenyard, toward whom he felt 
admiration tempered only by a sense of his own superior 
scholarship, an attitude which a number of times so nearly 
fetched him a clout in the face that I held my breath. 

“If Miss Lispenyard could be persuaded to express her 
views on this subject/’ he said one day at a conference, 
“I’m sure we should all be interested.” 

“Does that provoke anything in you, Miss Lispenyard ?” 
I asked after pausing as long as I could out of respect for 
her temper. 

“Silence!” she fairly snorted. 

Upon the whole their faces were proud, clear, empty, 
and handsome. They had a sort of comradeship based 
upon the common assumption of injured innocence. They 
gazed with certain but patient superiority. One man had 
a fine moustache, another dressed like a dandy and petted 
himself for it, and still another thought constantly of his 
shoes and seemed never to wear the same pair twice. Two 
or three met my eyes with interest that sometimes seemed 
antagonistic and at other times speculative. Among the 
women there was one with short, curly hair that would 
not stay put; she was capable of using her mind actively 
but usually came to lectures too tired to listen. Her bril¬ 
liance and her industry led me to recommend her for a 
travelling fellowship. I thought that perhaps on the voyage 


64 HORATIO’S STORY 

to Europe or on a train somewhere she might find a little 
time to stop and think. 

But Rhoda interested me more than any of the others, 
and to this day I do not know whether it was because of 
my feeling for her or because of some intrinsic quality 
of the student that raised her above the others. Possibly 
it was due to both reasons. It stimulated me to have her in 
the room. I would take more care in the preparation of 
a lecture, rely less upon notes, and try to finish up the 
product with rhetorical economy. I would try also to use 
the type of contrast or figure that would raise her eye¬ 
brows a little higher, that would make her lips meet with 
more firmness and her smile more satirical, or that would 
cause her to laugh frankly. No wonder Mr. Jones bowed 
to Miss Lispenyard; she set the pace for the class. 

The haunting, pathetic defensive that had aroused my 
sympathy for Rhoda as a child had now disappeared; the 
fearlessness that she also then possessed, though it came 
to the surface infrequently, was now in the ascendant. 
Her chin, which just escaped a brutal forcefulness and 
always prevented her from being really beautiful, had 
the quality of resistance. There was a great deal of 
determination about her face. Her lips moved with fine 
flexibility; they were attractive and decisive without the 
firmness of stupidity, the irresolution of weakness, or 
the heaviness of the sense. The line of her nose was 
fairly regular—in fact, almost perfect—and what was 
sensuous in her nature found expression in the unbeautiful 
but attractive quivering roundness of her nostrils. 

Her courage was a moral quality and seemed to proceed 
from her vast nervous energy; it lifted her brows, it 
opened her lids; her gray eyes would meet you sparkling. 
Her wrists and fingers were unusually firm, and she rarely 
raised her hands above the level of her elbows. Her 
Western experience had left her worn and thin,, but 


HORATIO'S STORY 


65 

she began to take on flesh. Rhoda threatened to become 
a luxurious woman, though she always escaped the sugges¬ 
tion of voluptuousness. 

Being by nature too ready to permit myself to be dull, 
it made a great difference to have Rhoda constantly before 
me. I speedily found the others more friendly, and the 
gathering about my desk at the close of lectures became 
so persistent that I had sometimes to invite them home or 
to a neighbouring restaurant in order to escape the lecture 
room. 

One day while hurrying across the campus to give a 
lecture in my other course, I met Rhoda wholly by chance. 
A few weeks of ominous silence had elapsed since we spent 
that quarrelsome Saturday afternoon at Belmont. 

“Hello, Lee,” she said, stopping. 

“Why, Rhoda,” I cried with obvious pleasure. “Have 
you a class right now?” 

“No. I’m through for the day.” 

“Come and hear me lecture on mysticism. It’s guaran¬ 
teed to be harmless.” 

“All right,” she said, “I will. I’ve always wanted to 
hear you as an outsider.” 

“That you can’t do; it’s psychologically impossible, but 
I should love to have you try. Afterward I’ll break away 
as soon as I can and I’ll meet you right here.” 

They heckled me so much during the lecture that toward 
the close I managed to dispel any brewing questions by 
assuming great haste in packing my books and papers a 
moment before the gong sounded. When it did I seized 
my bag and wraps and turned sharply on my heel. The 
motor was waiting and I managed to reach it just in time 
to open the door most gallantly for Rhoda, to the amused 
astonishment of the wandering students who chanced to be 
hard by. 

“Let’s run out to Belmont,” I said. “Wentworth is all 


66 HORATIO’S STORY 

excitement to see you again. He asks after you every 
day.” 

“I’d love to,” said Rhoda, and then after a pause she 
asked, “Why don’t you send him to school, Lee ?” 

“I can’t find one where he would learn more or better 
than he learns at home.” My answer did not satisfy my 
kinswoman, her objection being that I had not looked for 
a school sufficiently. Our conversation led naturally to 
other topics; we spoke of my unfitness to be a professor 
of philosophy, or to bring up a small boy without help 
from outside. Just as we neared Belmont she began in 
that soft, clear voice that always endeared her to me and 
that she always seemed to employ when what she had to 
say was of far less significance than the emotion that 
prompted her to say it: 

“I was horrid to you when I was here last. If you 
should ask me why in your usually inquisitive way I’m 
sure I shouldn’t be able to tell you. Your criticism 
shouldn’t have hurt my feelings no matter how cruel it 
seemed because I ought to have known you and trusted 
you as a friend. If we’re going to be friends again we 
shall have to be unguarded. I’ve always been too guarded, 
perhaps because my life has been too hard, and that’s one 
of the reasons why I’ve had so few friends.” 

“Perhaps, on the contrary, Rhoda, your life has seemed 
hard because you’ve made it so with your guardedness.” 

“At any rate, the moment I saw you coming across the 
campus this afternoon, I was sorry that I’d been horrid 
to you.” 

“My dear lady,” I said, “my dear lady!” 

She went on, during the course of the afternoon, to 
explain herself to me. She had not been at her best that 
fall and winter; only during the last few days had she 
been able to enjoy life and health and breathe deeply. 
Not that she had been actually ill; she had simply felt 


HORATIO'S STORY 


67 

forlorn and lonely. Her release from teaching had been 
too unexpected, and the consequent relaxation had been too 
sudden and too complete for one unaccustomed to it. She 
would sit in her little room and look out of the window 
by the hour, unable to believe that the drudging duties of 
the boarding school did not await her. She would walk 
through the undeveloped streets of Arlington, thinking 
that in a moment she would have to take a car for South 
Boston, there to fit into a domestic life that teemed with 
hatefulness. She wanted to recall the youthful curiosity 
and enthusiasm she had felt years ago at Radcliffe. She 
wanted to feel the great relief that she felt when she first 
left home and went to live in a dormitory. If only she 
could be in love with life again; if only music or paint¬ 
ing could move her soul as it once did. Not that she had 
ever hoped to practice any art, but she had at one time 
given herself to the arts to be taught by them. 

“In those days,” I said to her, “life lay before you. 
You had a definite purpose. Your teaching had the bad 
effect that it has on everyone who is not born to it, or 
who does not take it up as the great thing in his life. It 
took everything out of you and gave you nothing in return. 
Wait till you’ve been at Arlington a little longer; it will 
make you feel like a child again. That’s the only real 
benefit of Arlington education.” 

“I wonder,” she whispered incredulously. 

“Have no doubts,” I assured her. “I observe it from 
week to week. Every hour that I lecture I can see you 
become more responsive, more healthily nervous. And if 
you can do that in 163a, my dear Rhoda, how you must 
be picking up in more lively things ?” 

Later in the afternoon I decided to run my cousin back 
to town myself. Her unexpected warmth had aroused my 
acquisitiveness and I did not want to lose a minute in her 


68 HORATIO’S STORY 

presence, so I easily invented an excuse to go and see my 
brother Hallam. 

‘Til drive myself/’ I said, “I do it every now and then 
to keep my hand in it. Greggory was my father’s man 
and he’s getting too old to drive and much too sensitive 
to have anyone take his place, so I’m getting accustomed 
to doing it myself and letting him repair the car. Any¬ 
way, I want to see Hal on business.” 

We said good-bye to Wentworth, who was already hav¬ 
ing his supper. 

“How do you expect me to get to sleep if you’re not 
here?” he asked of me. 

“You may stay up till I come back if you’ll watch the 
fire and start your lessons for to-morrow.” 

“Come back before I get too sleepy.” 

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to Cousin Rhoda?” 
I asked. 

“Good-bye, Rhoda.” 

“That’s right,” she said and kissed him. “Don’t cousin 
me!” 

We were off for a short brisk ride in the open. I had 
taken an extra coat for Rhoda. It was a little four- 
cylinder runabout that cried out pertly now and then in 
the cold dampness of the February evening, and the tires 
made the frosty ruts crackle and squeak. We let down the 
windshield and caught the cold air in our faces. 

“It's fun,” said Rhoda, but being preoccupied with the 
motor, for my driving always requires extraordinary con¬ 
centration, I could do no more than maintain a joyful 
silence. 

“Don’t be so precious with yourself any more,” I said 
when I set her down. “Let’s be friends as we used to be.” 

“All right,” she said, “let’s.” 

In an hour I was at my brother’s at Commonwealth 
Avenue. 


HORATIO'S STORY 


69 

“I say,” said Hallam as he came into the library, “can’t 
you stay for dinner? Hypatia will be down in a minute. 
You look in awfully good humour.” 

“Have to put the boy to bed.” 

“I always forget that you have a boy. How is Went¬ 
worth these days?” 

“As well as can be expected.” 

“Why, has he been ill ?” 

“No, just young.” 

“Come on, stay. Can’t you telephone ?” 

“He wouldn’t go to sleep properly. He’s waiting up 
for me and he’d be cross in the morning. No, I dropped 
in to ask you to increase the insurance on 899 Mass. Ave¬ 
nue,” and we talked business for ten minutes. On the 
way to the door I turned to Hallam and said: 

“Why don’t you get Hypatia to ask Rhoda Lispenyard 
to dinner sometime?” 

“Guess I’d better.” He thought a moment and added: 
“You used to see more of her than anyone else in the 
family. Shall we ask you too ?” 

“Certainly.” 

“What made you think of it?” he asked as he opened 
the door. 

“She takes 163a with me, and I have a suspicion that 
she’s neglected.” 

“Something must be wrong if she’s taking your course. 
I’ll see if I can’t counteract your influence,” he shouted 
after me. 

“Good-night, Hal,” I said, putting my foot on the 
starter. I made a hasty meal at the club and drove home. 
Wentworth, lost in a bath robe of mine that had the effect 
of making him appear much smaller than he really was, sat 
sleepily before the fire, a book in one hand and a huge 
poker in the other. The little boy’s head drooped and I 


jo HORATIO'S STORY 

suspected that his eyelids were closed. Jenkins sat in 
a far corner reading his paper. 

“Anything more, sir ?” he asked. 

“Nothing more, thank you, Jenkins.” 

On hearing voices Wentworth raised his head and 
opened his eyes. 

“When did you come home, father?” 

“This minute, Went. Just in time to put you to bed.” 
Lifting him in my arms I carried him upstairs. 

“Father,” he said sleepily when I had tucked him in. 

“Yes.” 

“Did you have dinner with Cousin Rhoda ?” 

“No.” 

“Why not ?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“You know an awful lot, father; I think you know 
more than Jenkins and even more than Greggory. But I 
notice more and more that when I ask you the simplest 
questions you say you don’t know.” 

My impulse was to say: “Son, you ask more questions 
than you used to.” Instead I tucked him in and opened 
the window in silence. 

“Good-night, boy, perhaps I’ll know more some day.” 

“Good-night, father.” 

Early that spring Rhoda largely recovered the vigour 
that she formerly possessed though it did not find expres¬ 
sion in the same ways. She had freed herself and stepped 
into a new environment; she had become a very different 
person. And, in general, life in Boston and its suburbs 
had softened a good deal in those ten years, as it was to 
harden again into new forms and conventionalities in the 
next. 

All at once it flashed upon her that the acquisition of 
means had stifled her impulse. At Radcliffe in the old 
days she had thought constantly and fervently on the 


HORATIO’S STORY 


7 * 

problem of earning her living and paying back what she 
thought to be a debt to the family, and that ambition had 
taken possession of her and become the driving power 
of her activity. But after her liberation, when she came 
east again, almost unawares she lost all purpose in life. 
Her studies, had she been by nature a person of a schol¬ 
arly turn, might have sufficed to satisfy her need; but she 
never was a woman who could take up an art or a science 
as a professional matter, and she could not deceive herself 
about it. 

By the first of March the late Thaddeus Collamore’s 
estate had gone sufficiently through the slow process of 
probate to place in her hands cash in amounts, though not 
very large, yet so far exceeding anything to which she was 
accustomed as to bewilder her. Five or six years’ salary at 
finishing school now appeared to be a very small fraction 
of her means. Always having suffered from poverty, 
there was in her nature a strong desire to experience the 
sensations of prodigality. Without ostentation and with 
no lack of generosity she longed to do what she wished 
unrestrained by motives of economy; and now, within 
limits much narrower than she realized, she could indulge 
this somewhat vulgar desire. And spend she did, in terms 
that made my brother Hallam, who managed the estate, 
whimper and urge Hypatia to hurry the dinner party 
that had been promised. “We must get that girl married,” 
he would say, “before she throws away everything.” 

Among her earliest gifts was a typewriter for Went¬ 
worth, it being her notion that he should learn to write 
first upon the machine. Unfortunately for her experiment 
he had learned to make his letters at five and was a thor¬ 
ough penman on his eighth birthday when he received the 
machine to his great joy. 

She became a tailored woman, one might almost say a 
smartly gowned woman. The last days of February found 


HORATIO’S STORY 


72 

her entrenched behind sealskin, and as I glanced over my 
spectacles I was aware that wealth became her, and I was 
only sorry that my uncle Tad had not been a wealthier 
man. Her neck and arms, usually bare these days, would 
nestle into a cloak that she would throw wistfully over her 
shoulders in the draughty hall. 

Even the new and splendid wardrobe did not satisfy 
her desire to spread her wings in the sun. There was 
a new car that spring, an attractive, small gray speedster 
that she would drive with her own ungloved hands and 
silken feet to the peril of herself and others, but without 
much actual damage to anything but the machine itself. 

With these trappings changes came into her character. 
Later she learned to accept the conveniences of her posi¬ 
tion as conveniences, but for the moment she was pre¬ 
occupied with her toys. Her speech became affected tem¬ 
porarily with the slang and profanity of the road and the 
garage; her temper became still more hasty, though it 
learned to cool itself sooner. She would fall into little 
poses, such as that of saluting traffic officers, of joking 
with them when stopped, and of taking no offense at the 
suggestion of ribaldry that not long previously would have 
shocked her. She became light, gay, easily absorbed in 
trifles. 

As this phase expanded she saw less of me, though we 
were excellent friends and neither of us gave up the idea 
of carrying on our former intimacy. Nothing in me, 
however, could find her interest as quickly as the garage 
man who changed her tire. Nor could I charm her as did, 
for instance, Mr. Henry Smallbox, with his lectures on 
the Russian novelists of the Nineteenth Century. She 
could never tease me as easily as the traffic officer, or even 
as coyly as she played Mr. Jones of Georgia when she 
ceased to take him seriously. His most effective compli¬ 
ment had been: “If all women were as stimulating as 


HORATIO’S STORY 


73 

you, Miss Lispenyard, I could be reconciled to co-educa¬ 
tion.” “I looked at him,” Rhoda told me later, “with my 
extra-special-crucify-me-without-further-notice expression 
and said: ‘If I could only open your eyes to see that other 
women are so much better at this game than I am!’ ” She 
loved to tease when it was fair game, but it is only just 
to say that she never tweaked a fellow’s whiskers unless 
the game was on. 

It was April before my testy sister-in-law perpetrated 
the dinner party that I had suggested in February. She 
pleaded a full calendar, but her real reason was that she 
thought that Rhoda had neglected to observe some social 
attention that she considered her due. Perhaps Rhoda had 
failed to call, or something like that, but Hypatia may also 
have wished to impress her renegade brother-in-law with 
the imposing nature of the social life that he had deliber¬ 
ately abandoned. 

It was not a large dinner. Besides myself and my 
brother there were four other gentlemen. They were men 
of a type; hostesses usually invited them when they were 
having an unmarried young woman no longer thought a 
debutante. They were all men of more or less established 
bachelorhood; one no longer called them boys and one 
didn’t just know why. It would seem that their whole 
idea in life was to keep on going to just such dinners, and 
their game was therefore to play against the hostess and 
never take a serious interest in any of these seconds on 
the marriage market. To accomplish this without giving 
offense to anyone was the prerequisite of the caste, and the 
source of an unbroken chain of well-planned dinners. 

The women present were all vaguely familiar to me. 
Like the men I knew them from the early days that pre¬ 
ceded and immediately followed my marriage. I suppose 
that, unlike the men, each had her own reason for remain- 


HORATIO’S STORY 


74 

ing single, and I did not impugn their motives in the 
matter. 

I thought that my hostess had clearly designed what 
she would have called a “lemons’ party” and as I had been 
in a sense the instigator of the affair I did not take the 
compliment as gracefully as I should have. There chanced 
to be one figure in our family who had, from time imme¬ 
morial, the universal reputation of being a bore and a 
sot, and of being obnoxious in general, and in particular 
disgusting to women. There may have been others who 
deserved his reputation, or at least some part of it, more 
than he; but Uncle Robert was traditionally with us the 
scapegoat of social abhorrence. So as soon as we were 
seated I looked up at my sister-in-law and said: 

“Where’s Uncle Rob to-night?” 

“I don’t know, Lee. Why do you ask?” 

“I thought he was coming,” I said, looking about the 
room significantly. 

Rhoda got the point immediately, and Hallam laughed 
with annoyance. Hypatia, however, felt outraged by my 
remark and was silent or incoherent as long as I remained 
in her presence. 

The conversation turned out miserably dull and I cannot 
remember a single line of it. Even the subjects are beyond 
recall, and I am not sure that there were any. Of course 
when a man is known to be a professor of philosophy it 
is futile for him to take the initiative at the table. For 
while people are sometimes willing to exercise their polite¬ 
ness by assuming a supercilious tolerance, they can rarely 
bring themselves to a level of graciousness where they can 
converse with him on terms of equality. I therefore went 
up to the library immediately after dinner and looked 
about for something to drink and something to read, and 
after amusing myself thus for an hour or two, I came 
to the conclusion that it was no longer too early to go, 


HORATIO’S STORY 


75 

and went downstairs again. As I entered the drawing 
room it seemed to me that a profound silence surrounded 
the ten or fifteen guests and, fearing that an alcoholic 
hallucination lay before me, I stood in the doorway pinch¬ 
ing myself through my trouser pockets. Upon seeing me 
Rhoda jumped up and bending over my sister’s chair 
began to speak privately to her. I strolled over in their 
direction, wondering whether I had forgot myself in the 
library. 

“Lee,” said Rhoda, swerving about, “do you mind taking 
me home?” 

“Delighted,” I said, unnaturally sleepily. 

“I’m sorry you’re going so soon, Rhoda,” Hypatia said. 

“Oh, I must,” Rhoda cried, and then told an elaborate 
falsehood about the necessity of studying for an examina¬ 
tion of mine on the morrow. When we were seated in 
the machine she said: 

“63 Pinkney, Lee.” 

“Pinkney ?” 

“Yes, I’ve a surprise for you.” 

“What is it ?” 

“My new apartment.” 

“Apartment ?” 

“Yes, apartment.” 

I had not expected it. I was doubtless very old-fash¬ 
ioned, but even in those days young women rarely took 
apartments alone. The idea, however, appealed to me, 
and the street I thought the most attractive in Boston. 
By the time Rhoda told me to stop, I was all excitement. 

It seemed to be the second floor of an old residence; 
my father could have told me who lived there during the 
Civil War. The room in front, where we entered, was 
the living room. It had a few bookshelves, a Colonial 
fireplace, a lounge, a gate-legged table, and one huge bay 
window with a gorgeous red and gold silk hanging. For- 


HORATIO’S STORY 


76 

tunately it was large enough, this room, to throw the 
furnishings into the background, and small enough so that 
you felt the intimate presence of Rhoda. It was her first 
room, and she was both proud and defensive about it. 

"‘It’s lovely, Rhoda,” I said. 

“Thanks, Lee. Let me take your things.” 

“This evening reminded me of so many years ago, 
Lee,” she said when we were comfortably seated on the 
divan. “I used to go to a dinner like that and then go 
home to South Boston and cry my heart out because I was 
poor. Now I feel merely angry, but probably if you 
hadn’t come home with me I’d be crying all the same. 
I’d be afraid that I might some day be like them myself. 
Don’t ever let me accept another invitation,” she added 
more to herself, I observed with regret, than to me. 

“I’m afraid I’m responsible for this one,” I admitted. 

“You ?” 

“I was at the bottom of it. I wanted you to come back 
and meet this kind of thing on your own terms. I wanted 
you to be for once in your life the person sought after in 
this crowd. I thought it would amuse you to come back 
with the tables turned.” 

“I’m glad you did it,” she said. “But once is enough. 
All evening I wanted to run to you and say: ‘I can’t stay 
here another minute.’ ” 

“The pity is that Hypatia gave us a rotten party on 
purpose to let me know what she thinks of my having 
dropped out of the bunch. After all, it must have been 
more than poverty and unhappiness at home that made 
you hate us all years ago.” 

“I can’t remember, and I don’t want to. Will you have 
a cigarette, Lee?” 

We sat smoking in silence for a moment and my eyes 
began stealing critically about the room as though I could 
find in the selection of books on her shelves or the arrange- 


HORATIO’S STORY 


77 

ment of things here and there some clue to her character 
that I lacked. 

“Don’t look at my books and things, please, Lee. I 
didn’t ask you to come up to-night for that. I want 
awfully to talk seriously to you.” 

“What is it?” I asked, looking at her in surprise. She 
was determined, and her brows knitted as close as they 
could. 

“I’ve reached a decision, and I came to it to-night as 
I sat there and watched those people. I listened to their 
inane conversation and thought myself so immensely supe¬ 
rior. I laughed at them inwardly for their scrupulously 
restrained conventions. Well, do you think I’m any better 
than they are, Lee Seebohm ?” 

“I hope so.” 

“Well, I don’t see why I should sit here and laugh at 
them.” 

“No, you shouldn’t laugh, Rhoda. I don’t know 
whether we’re superior or not. All I can say with certainty 
is that I prefer your society to theirs. They bore me as 
they bore you, and they give me the same luxurious feeling 
of superiority.” 

“You have a right to feel superior, Lee, because you’re 
a distinguished scholar; because, in a small way, you’re a 
great man.” 

I was swept off my feet by this admission of Rhoda’s. 
I had longed for her approbation for so long and had re¬ 
ceived nothing but very unfavourable criticism, that I 
wanted to seize her in my arms. But for some reason or 
other expression of any kind failed me, and I remember 
standing up and turning my back to her. 

“My objection to you,” she went on, “is not that you’re a 
poor philosopher but that I have very little sympathy for 
a man who spends his life in that pursuit. 

I turned quickly about with a smile on my lips, glad that 


78 HORATIO'S STORY 

I had not been able to express the emotion that this remark 
killed. My mind seemed to reach back and find the rem¬ 
nant of the discussion. 

“Well, it isn’t fair to be so damned superior,” I said. 
“My brother Hallam, for example, is a good lawyer, much 
more distinguished in his profession than I am in mine.” 

“Maybe it isn’t profession or distinction or accomplish¬ 
ment that I’m interested in to-night. It’s something alto¬ 
gether different.” 

“Character, I suppose.” 

“Not that either. Your brother and his wife are fine 
characters. There are lots of things they wouldn’t do for 
moral reasons. I trust Hallam implicitly as a lawyer. And 
I’m sure that most of those young old men and women 
can be trusted.” 

“Yes,” I said, “I’m sure they can.” 

Rhoda got up and put some wood on the fire. She lit 
another cigarette hurriedly and forgot to offer them to me. 
“Lee, it’s not quite character but character has a lot to do 
with it. It’s personality that I believe in. It’s personality 
that makes me feel superior to that bunch. But it isn’t 
enough that I should feel that way; I’ve got to prove it to 
myself. I’m twenty-seven, Lee. Please regard my life up 
to the present as a total loss. Regard me as being born 
right now. I’m going to change everything; I’m going to be 
a real person, not the time-server that I was in the West 
nor the indolent hussy that I am here right now. I’ve got 
to realize my personality!” 

I was much impressed by the assertion of self. By way 
of contrast it made me feel as though I were a low type 
after all. At the same time I felt that she was incautiously 
blind to matters of great moment that escaped her observa¬ 
tion. Of one of them I wished to speak without endanger¬ 
ing, if possible, her expansive mood. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


79 

“Rhoda, do you mind telling me what place you give 
marriage in the scheme of life?” 

“We used to talk of that years ago,” she said with a fur¬ 
tive smile, “and I haven’t materially changed my views. 
If I could find the right man, and if we could marry with¬ 
out doing violence to our freedom and our ideals, I should 
do so gladly, but I’ve almost given up the hope of that. 
When we spoke of it last, Lee, do you remember that I 
wanted freedom from an economic and domestic problem? 
I sold out more than I knew to get that. Now I want free¬ 
dom from self-reproach because I regard myself as a supe¬ 
rior woman without really being one. And the only way 
I can think of to get that is to strike out for a career of 
some kind, and I don’t believe that there are many men who 
could help me to do that after marriage.” 

“No, I don’t think so either.” 

“It’s got to be real work, work that gets the best out 
of me, Lee. I want you to back me in this. The last time 
I felt myself entirely alone, and everything went badly. 
Will you help me work it out, old man ?” 

“Rhoda, I’ll back you as long as you want me to.” 

“Do you think I could ever be a newspaper reporter?” 
she asked suddenly. 

“I never gave the matter any thought but I will if you 
like. What gave you such an unwholesome idea ?” 

“I don’t know,” she said. 

‘If you want to take my advice from the start, I say 
finish your courses at Arlington. Finish all of them as 
well as you’re doing mine and then you’ll want the vaca¬ 
tion when you get it. Then you’ll be in a better position 
to decide exactly what you want to do.” 

“Oh, you stupid old dear! Do you think I can wait to 
decide what I want to do? Don’t you know me well 
enough to know that I shall have to decide at once!” 

“Well,” I said, getting up to go, “it’s too late to do an>- 


80 HORATIO’S STORY 

thing but leave you undecided for the night. I’ve simply 
got to go.” 

“Speaking of the summer, Lee,” she said as we went 
to the door, “I’m putting Uncle Tad's old place in Chester 
in order. Will you and Went run out there this year 
for a while ?” 

“I'd love it,” I said, “provided that you don't have any 
objectionable people there with us.” 

“Agreed. I’ll have you alone. Good-night.” 

Although better friends than ever, we saw very little 
of each other that spring. It took some time before these 
fine intentions waxed strong enough to compete with her 
enthusiasm for her car, her wardrobe, and her apartment. 
She was not yet sufficiently bored with her surroundings. 
And as long as she was preoccupied with these things I 
felt sure that she would find me tedious. In what little 
work she did in Phil. 163a I observed a very considerable 
change and I gave her a straight B for the course. Her 
examination showed a sound and fairly extensive grasp of 
the history involved in the subject, but her understanding 
of philosophy and to a greater degree her understand¬ 
ing of religion were not as firm as I had wished. In the 
questions I had framed for the purpose of exercising judg¬ 
ment in a problem removed from habit and experience she 
answered, I thought, with plenty of good sense. 

She found another friend, however, who could not help 
reminding her constantly of her new ambitions. It was 
Emily Goodshoe, a tough fibred, businesslike journalist, 
who had been slowly making a place for herself all the time 
that Rhoda had been teaching in the West. Doubtless it 
was she who had suggested to her the idea of journalism. 
Miss Goodshoe never made my heart throb with emotion, 
nor did my mind ever teem with interest for her. She 
lacked, I thought, imagination, humour, and colour, but she 
had a great many commendable qualities such as industry, 


HORATIO’S STORY 


81 


earnestness, and devotion. She and Rhoda had been pre¬ 
viously acquainted at Radcliffe, but they had not been 
friends until they met by chance in Boston that year, and 
the friendship, once begun, took root. Emily managed to 
inspire Rhoda where Rhoda most needed inspiration; 
namely, in the matter of giving direction to her newly 
acquired impulse. 

Late in June Rhoda reminded me of my promise and I 
started out with Wentworth in the runabout. It was our 
first tour together, and he was indeed very happy about it. 
At Chester we found Rhoda a bustling hostess. The place 
had run down and she was busy with gardener and car¬ 
penter restoring things to their former hospitality. 
Changes were made. A swimming pool was constructed, 
the barn made into a garage, and a very small barn built 
for the few remaining animals. She laid out a tennis court 
and modernized the house without changing its character. 

“Isn’t it wonderful!” she cried. “This is going to be 
my retreat when it gets either too hot or too cold in Boston. 
You may think it’s too large for me but it isn’t. I’m going 
to have lots of friends some day, and this place is going 
to be gay and free!” 

The first morning Rhoda came down in breeches and 
worked or supervised all day. Her hair was short now, 
and she could wear it so without disturbing the lines of 
her head, for it had just enough curl to be suggestive and 
indefinite. I never saw her so enthusiastic, so preoccupied 
with thoughts of the future, so anxious, so panting. We 
were very happy, both of us, and Wentworth, though he 
could not forgive Rhoda the short hair and the breeches, 
was otherwise completely seduced by the farm. What 
delighted him was the country, the hills, the perpetual 
action of agricultural affairs, and the entire freedom from 
the disciplinary education that was the sorrow of his 
childhood and the foundation of his future. 


82 


HORATIO’S STORY 


“Why did you do it, Rhoda?” he would ask her about 
her personal innovations. 

“Don’t you like me this way?” she replied. 

“I do, but . . he would say and then pause, knowing 
that he could not fill out his sentence. She upset his ideas, 
quite naturally, of what a woman should be. 

He liked to feed the pigs and after supper he would 
run off with the gardener and, in that pestering way of 
children that one dare not discourage for fear of checking 
the healthy growth of curiosity, he would watch him do 
his chores. 

“I hope he hasn’t bothered your man too much,” I said 
the last night that we were there. “I thought you would 
tell me if you found him too much of a nuisance.” 

“He enjoys him,” said Rhoda. “I can see it.” 

“You’re making the old place awfully comfortable.” 

“Lee, I adore that boy!” She laid her hand on my arm 
with more affection than she would have bestowed upon 
me for my own sake. 

“That’s good. . . . He resembles his maternal grand¬ 
mother, by the way.” 

“Hell! Lee,” she cried, gently disturbing the order of 
my beard with her free hand, “he’s your boy, your own 
image!—that is when he isn’t my boy, as he is right now. 
See what fun he’s having with his pigs.” 

In the distance I observed the pride of my life mingling 
with the beasts of the barnyard on terms of familiarity 
that would have shocked me had not Rhoda taken upon 
herself the responsibility for his recently acquired tastes. 

“You’re the only woman I know with whom I could 
share him,” I said absent-mindedly. It was at best an 
awkward speech, capable of being interpreted not only 
beyond my intention but with literal truth; and it mortified 
me to indulge in double entendre, which is against my 
nature when serious, and it annoyed me exceedingly be- 


HORATIO'S STORY, 83 

cause I had planned to discuss this very matter with 
Rhoda shortly. She, however, perceived my embarrass¬ 
ment and understood precisely the reason for it. With 
the sympathetic intuition that distinguished her from every 
woman I have met, she said immediately and with perfect 
candour: 

“I often wonder why.” 

That gave me the opportunity to pursue either meaning 
or both. I’m sure that if I ever felt gratitude I did then. 
Uppermost in my mind was the impulse to go on talking 
of Wentworth in his present state without suggesting the 
possibility of a step-mother but, for some reason or other, 
perhaps that Rhoda seemed to respond to the double 
entendre, I said, unable to break at once into the concrete: 

“I’ve often wondered why, myself! You’re so very 
different from the kind of woman that I think I like when 
I sit down and figure out what a woman should be, and 
yet I never . . . It’s because you’re so damned honest!” 
I added, breaking away from both of my former channels 
and putting it emphatically upon a philosophical basis. 

Suddenly Rhoda kissed my forehead as she had done 
once long before. I felt myself reaching out, but she had 
fled to the other side of the swing and stood with her hands 
resting gently upon the board seat, still smiling upon me, 
but in an entirely different mood. 


CHAPTER V 


Travelling with Wentworth in those days thoroughly 
tested one’s ability to answer unrelated questions extempo¬ 
raneously. His reaching out after knowledge covered, 
though somewhat sparsely, the whole range of human ex¬ 
perience and much that seemed foreign even to the untram¬ 
melled imagination of childhood. On account of my limi¬ 
tations as a motorist I had forbade his asking me anything 
while the car was in motion, which severely tested his 
powers of restraint, but he found relief in remembering 
what he had wished to ask, and, when at lunch or while 
taking oil, he would let fly at me with a great many 
inquiries at once. 

On our way home from Chester, however, I observed 
for the first time while driving with him that something 
preoccupied his mind to the exclusion of his habitual, 
restless curiosity. For an hour or two he did not even 
desire to probe my mind. Wentworth hummed or whis¬ 
tled, he regarded the scenery listlessly, as a man does when 
he feels certain that his concentration is so perfect that 
he does not even fear distraction. 

After forty or fifty miles of comfortable travel one of 
my rear tires went down unexpectedly. I got out, put on 
a duster, and began to change the rim, having plenty of 
spares already mounted. Wentworth remained in his seat 
and made no effort to assist me with a wrench as he had 
been taught to do, nor did he avail himself of the armistice 
to attack me with questions. He looked, I thought, a little 
sad. After tightening up the rim I pounded all the other 
tires with my hammer to see whether they were sharp 

84 


HORATIO’S STORY 85 

or flat, and taking off my duster with a sigh of satisfac¬ 
tion, I lit my pipe. 

“Let’s rest a while,” I said. “We’re in no hurry.” 

“I’m sorry we didn’t stay longer at Chester, father. I 
hate going back to Belmont.” 

“You’ll be glad enough when you get home.” It did 
not displease me that he disliked leaving Uncle Tad’s old 
place. 

“Cousin Rhoda is awfully nice, isn’t she, father?” 

“Yes, indeed she is, Went.” 

“Father, is it right for a man whose wife is dead to 
marry again ?” 

“I think so, my boy; I think so.” 

There is little that I dislike more than giving a child a 
definite answer to questions the full meaning of which he 
does not understand himself. On this occasion Wentworth 
had very little notion of what he meant by right, or what 
he meant by marriage; and yet the question was a fair 
one, for a child has to use some words as a mathematician 
uses symbols of the unknown. Sitting down on the run¬ 
ning board with my back to him, I added: “It’s perfectly 
right, in some instances.” 

“Oh!” he said, and I heard no more until after I had 
knocked out my pipe and climbed back into my seat. “Isn’t 
it too bad, father,” he said, fetching a deep sigh and assum¬ 
ing an air of finality, “that you’re too old to marry Cousin 
Rhoda.” 

“Isn’t it!” I said, and put the car in motion as fast as 
I could. 

That was why I wanted to keep Wentworth close to 
Rhoda. Childhood has a great deal of unconscious cruelty 
about it and a father dare not wince. If he does the child 
reacts usually in a fashion unhealthy to himself; either he 
feels his power and wants to bully, or he assumes an atti¬ 
tude of superiority, not based upon the real superiority of 


86 


HORATIO’S STORY 


youth over age, but upon a false notion of the tenderness 
with which parents have to be treated. I never thought 
much of objecting to the candour of an honest child; it 
should be formed rather than destroyed. 

Of course, when this cruelty manifested itself against 
others I could meet it at once. I had already trained him 
not to comment upon obvious afflictions or deformations of 
the flesh. “Jenkins,” he had once said to the butler, “why 
do you have those horrid things on your neck?” and I 
spent an afternoon memorable in the history of his own 
afflictions explaining the error of such remarks. But it 
remained for me to find some way of restraining him from 
making unkind remarks to me. 

There was naturally no sting in his reflections about my 
great age as compared to my cousin, for I was then only 
thirty-four and she was twenty-eight. If I had spoken 
to him I have no doubt that he would have cried as though 
he had done something seriously displeasing to me, and 
such an experience, if repeated, would have a tendency 
to inhibit his frank utterance in my presence, and nothing 
could have been further from my wishes. 

The problem boiled down to something like this. I 
wanted him to possess a few ideas that he lacked, ideas 
that had to do with the fitness of expressing a certain kind 
of observation to his father, and I wanted these ideas to 
reach him through a medium other than myself, preferably 
Rhoda. 

But after all, I thought as we rode on, the problem is 
not as simple as all that. What matter if he did pass me 
some stinging parcels of impudence now and then? These 
remarks, of course, were not in themselves worth a mo¬ 
ment’s consideration. The palpable absurdity of the par¬ 
ticular remark kept me smiling for at least ten miles, and 
yet in my heart I knew that he had judged me with the 
only unmarried woman he had known and concluded that 


87 


HORATIO'S STORY 

I was unfit for her. His putting it down on the account 
of age really signified nothing; his sigh and his finality 
had told volumes. 

We stopped for lunch. His philosophizing mood had 
vanished but mine remained. We had drawn up under 
the shade of some great elms on the skirt of a small town. 
With our backs to the road we sat dangling our feet over 
the stone wall of a pasture. The cattle in the foreground 
amused me as I munched a sandwich and drank some 
coffee. 

“What are you thinking about, father ?” Wentworth 
asked. 

It occurs to me that that horse is a very beautiful 
animal.” My son did not disagree with me but his eyes 
did not long remain in the foreground; they became 
enticed by an object upon the horizon. 

“Father, what is that next to the big red barn?” 

“It’s a windmill, son.” 

“What’s that ?” 

“It stands with wings outstretched to the wind; and 
the wind takes hold of the wings and turns them round.” 

“What for ?” 

I had to take paper and pencil and give him a diagram 
of a water-supply system that worked with the assistance 
of a windmill. 

His knowledge was too factual, even for a boy of seven, 
and it was probably my fault for not having given him 
sufficient play with his education. I have noticed that 
some children when impressed, say: “I like that,” and 
others, “I want that,” but with Wentworth it was always 
an inquiry about the facts. As we climbed back into our 
seats it seemed to me that the peculiar cruelty that he had 
recently developed was closely linked with his excessive 
indifference to what he liked and didn’t like. It was obvi¬ 
ous even to me that it would have impaired his honesty to 


88 


HORATIO'S STORY 


enjoin him from making cutting personal remarks and 
that whether I or Rhoda did it made very little difference. 
The main thing was that he had no sympathy. 

I wanted Rhoda to develop sympathy in the boy, sym¬ 
pathy not intellectualized, but born of imagination. After 
all, what I wanted was something very close to emotion. 

We reached Belmont late that evening, and after I had 
rested and attended to the details of domestic life, I 
walked slowly up to the club and seated myself in a chair 
that I placed on the lawn just a few paces from the 
veranda. It was a lovely summer night with a cool, full 
moon and a breeze that seemed to come from the distant 
sea. There was hardly any mist, but from a wisp of 
smoke here and there the lights of Boston were reflected. 

“Wentworth,” I said to myself, “needs Rhoda, but 
I wonder if my reason for insisting upon it is not that I 
need her myself.” It was a matter that disturbed me not 
only that night but for a good many nights to come. 

The remainder of the summer I spent in Belmont, but 
I sent Wentworth back to Rhoda, being persuaded that, 
although he wept to come home and was genuinely lonely 
for me, it was better to let him have the run of the farm 
than my yard, and better still that he should have Rhoda 
for a playmaster. 

Rhoda was brilliant that fall. If my young devil needed 
her he certainly gave a good deal in return. For, as she 
told me again and again, she had never loved anyone so 
much before. True, while studying she had developed 
imaginative and romantic devotion for this or that pro¬ 
fessor, and while teaching she had been fond of this one 
or that, but she had never before been able to love without 
reservation, and the fact that it was a mere attachment 
for a child did not detract from what the experience meant 
to her. He became something of a charge, but her capac¬ 
ity to handle him increased rapidly. It meant a great deal 


HORATIO’S STORY 


89 

for her to have someone frankly glad when she put in an 
appearance; he had loved her without a moment’s hesita¬ 
tion, and his childish attentions would bring a flush of 
pleasure to her cheeks. 

She did take up journalism—what though I had pleaded 
against it—and she may have exercised good judgment 
in the matter. My arguments had been in favour of more 
teaching; I had urged that it was more suited to her nature 
and that I could find her a good opening, something, I 
promised, that would not even remind her of her work 
in Wisconsin. Journalism, however, was what she wanted, 
and it is only just to say that she never regretted her deci¬ 
sion for long, and that she always met with a fair measure 
of success. 

The apartment went through a gradual metamorphosis, 
beginning with a slightly bohemian atmosphere and becom¬ 
ing ultimately something of a studio. She began having 
friends and entertaining; and I was not amazed never to 
find a familiar face there. They were chiefly of the 
younger set in the arts, the press, and the theatre, people 
who stimulated Rhoda and urged her to action. 

She had never been able to get on with her own family 
or the people she knew as a young girl, and the university 
society she had found too microcosmic, too coldly abstract 
and theoretical. The first was a train that took one no- 
whither; the second, one that remained perpetually stalled 
at a charming way station. It did not therefore surprise 
me to find Rhoda recruiting her acquaintances from the 
dens of the younger bohemian lions. Accepting it as 
a matter of course, I was curious to find out who her 
lasting friends would be when they distinguished them¬ 
selves from mere membership in a hastily assembled 
set. 

Of course I did not figure of social consequence in this 
milieu. They thought of me rather as a quaint old school- 


go HORATIO’S STORY 

master in whom Rhoda was charitable enough to recognize 
at most a distant relationship, and I did not care to assert 
myself to upset this view. I had so well escaped social 
responsibility up to this point that I did not then wish to 
revise my bargain with life. 

Rhoda entertained badly at first but within a month 
or two she reported that people were enjoying themselves, 
and I could see that it was so. There was nothing remark¬ 
able about it. Any attractive young woman of intelligence 
and means can almost always meet the world on her own 
terms, but in Rhoda’s case it was an advance. Previously 
she had been as solitary as a person can well be; she had 
been lonely at home, at college, and at the school where 
she had taught, and she had held aloof so persistently that 
her associates distrusted her and came to avoid her almost 
in the manner of persecution. Rhoda now began going 
out and receiving, quite as though she had done so joy¬ 
ously all her life. 

Her work was fairly amusing to me that fall. She 
began modestly as a free lance. What she actually com¬ 
posed in the way of journalism was of that extraneous 
matter that swells our papers with tedium, the feature 
story, and, distressing and distasteful as these were to me, 
I enjoyed immensely going over with her the stories of 
their origins and sales. Journalists never write anything 
one-half so precious as the stories of how they get their 
news. 

As she told me these things I learned much about Rhoda 
that I never knew, perhaps because it did not manifest 
itself in her nature before. She loved to talk; she loved 
to reveal her emotion toward life by means of her narrative 
of daily events. She wanted sympathy and understanding, 
but she had not yet reached the point where she demanded 
them and fought for them. Her manoeuvering after these 
solaces developed charm, kindness, and sweetness that she 


HORATIO’S STORY 


9 i 

never previously exhibited, qualities that she soon found 
worth cultivating for their own sake. 

She wanted people to think well of her, to be glad when 
she came into the room. I would remonstrate with her 
that close cropped hair and her gruff and boisterous man¬ 
ners shocked most of the very Boston people whom she 
wished to endear. “I don’t care,” she would say, “I do 
what I think right.” “But you don’t need to make every 
rationalized whim of yours a moral principle to die for,” 
was my usual reply. 

The city editor of the Boston Journal refused to see 
her or any of her copy. Rhoda was naturally furious. 
The Journal presently found room for a few stories 
ridiculing the modern woman. Rhoda fought back as well 
as she could, with the result that she found herself in a 
blaze of publicity just a few months after launching her 
career. 

Much as she suffered from the personal animosity and 
easy contempt of this editor, she went forward with others, 
particularly with his competitors. She had what she called 
a good nose for news, and I think she possessed a faculty 
for concrete and extemporaneous expression. Words 
never bothered her; she was naively oblivious to style all 
her life. If she got wind of the rumour that this or that 
city editor would look favourably upon a story dealing with 
the newest Paris frocks to reach Boston, or the laying 
record of some ancient bricklayer of Cambridge, or the 
most baffling mechanical toy invented, she would go hunt¬ 
ing like a cat, pounce upon the gossip, and then go back 
to her apartment to hammer it off on her machine. It 
was hard for me to distinguish between her work and 
that of her contemporaries in the same field. What struck 
me as creditable was not the product of her pen, but the 
competence with which she went about doing what she 
set out to do. 


9 2 


HORATIO’S STORY 


That fall we played golf or tennis together at Belmont, 
or walked idly over the paths and roads not frequented 
by automobiles. At each meeting she would tell me every¬ 
thing that happened since we last met, down to the most 
minute details. I learned all about her stories, who would 
take them and who not. She thought of everything that 
season as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, 
as a sort of training school for the journalistic opening 
that was to come when she had spread her name far 
enough. What sustained her ambition was the picture of 
a career, the hope of attaining a position of fulfilment, a 
position that would eliminate her self-reproach and permit 
that happy expansion of personality that she desired of all 
things. 

In looking back over that winter to-day, I have a ten¬ 
dency to think of it too much as a matter of simple friend¬ 
ship chiefly because it ended that way. It was not, how¬ 
ever, completely idyllic. I thought of her always, and as 
I went through the commonplace experiences of life I 
found myself making a narrative record like hers in the 
back of my mind. I too would pour out with meaningless 
little stories of my doings just as though they dealt with 
matters of importance or interest; but, while Rhoda did 
it in order to elicit my sympathy, I think that I did it in 
an effort to reveal myself as well as I could to a woman, 
and one way to accomplish this was to focus her attention 
on my emotion in such trivial matters as the bursting of 
a tire or the flunking of a student. 

Certain things in nature arouse in most of us an 
invariable and individual response. I, for one, am affected 
by falling snow, and by the light mist that sometimes rises 
from the ground or pavement when a soft rain strikes a 
warm surface. I cannot remember falling snow without 
also remembering that I wished to go walking, to feel the 


HORATIO’S STORY, 93 

softness against my cheeks, or to catch the sharp, frozen 
wind as the case might be. 

But closely associated with this desire to go walking 
is the desire to go walking with a woman, and a woman 
toward whom I stand in a certain relationship. For as 
long before that fall as I can remember, I had never seen 
either of these manifestations of nature without a longing 
to lock arms with the Rhoda of Radcliffe, in the old days; 
later, with one long since dead; and, finally, with some 
vague figure of my imagination who might some day mean 
to me what her predecessors had meant. 

Snow came late in November that fall, one Sunday 
afternoon while Rhoda and I were assisting at Went¬ 
worth’s early supper. I got up and went to the window 
and I was amazed to observe that as I watched the snow 
falling, I felt Rhoda’s presence much nearer than I had 
at the table. 

“Rhoda,” I said, “let’s go walking in the snow.” 

“Oh don’t,” said Wentworth. “We’ve just come in.” 

“You have a cold, son. You’d better amuse yourself 
lighting the first fire of the year. Want to come, Rhoda?” 

She looked at me and then at Wentworth. “You’ll be 
hurt if we go?” 

“No,” said Wentworth, bending over the wood basket, 
“but please come back here before you go in for the eve¬ 
ning.” 

“We’ll only be a minute, son,” I said as we put on our 
things. 

“Lee,” said Rhoda, as we struck the path that runs 
around the edge of the golf course, “it’s great fun to see 
the snowflakes catch in your beard. If you only wouldn’t 
melt them so fast they’d turn it white! I think I’ll write 
a feature story about snow in the philosophic beard.” 

“You couldn’t sell it, but if you could write one about 
yQm*gg]f as I see you it would turn out a classic. Yhe 


94 


HORATIO’S STORY 


snow hides our defects and our reality; it shrouds us in 
a veil of seductive power. Only what is glorious shines 
through and seems to come from a bed of crystals, miracu¬ 
lously brilliant. Do you know, I should like to see you in 
the middle of the week, this time? I can’t wait so long to 
see you again.” 

‘‘You silly old thing! What’s happening to you?” 

“What always happens to a man when he has a friend— 
when he gives himself to a friendship like this.” 

“It isn’t because I’m not your friend that I don’t want 
to come out in the middle of the week, Lee.” 

“Friendship is a delicate and tender thing; it seeks the 
recognition of all that is sensitive, of all that can ease pain 
or preserve pleasure. It desires to smooth the rough; to 
give life a daily bread of happiness. It tries, above all, 
to preserve itself as it is; it is conservative, sedate, re¬ 
strained. Its virtues are constancy, sympathy, and under¬ 
standing. But friendship, Rhoda, when it is touched with 
love, becomes expansive; it reaches out after more and 
will not be satisfied. It asks frankly for all or nothing; it 
gives all with a gesture of joy. It turns its back upon the 
plain facts of life and tries to grasp the ideal by the hand. 
Friendship, transformed by love, disregards the limits of 
human beings and sometimes destroys itself trying to give 
what it has not, and trying to take what cannot exist.” 

We walked in silence for some time and then, when I 
took her arm and felt the pressure of her hand, I said: 
“Rhoda, I want to make the same offer that I made that 
June evening in Cambridge.” 

“It sounds cruel of me to say it, Lee, but I never could 
have forgiven you if you had not wanted to marry me. It 
would have seemed a terrible slight to our friendship.” 

“No more than yours in not accepting.” 

“Oh, please don’t ask me, Lee. I do love you, and I’m 
mad about Went, but I just couldn’t marry you. I’m not 


HORATIO'S STORY 


95 

going to say that I find you unattractive—there never was 
another man in my life who came anywhere near you—and 
I’m not going to say that you’re not ambitious enough, as 
I once did, because when a man is like you he doesn’t need 
to be ambitious. All he has to be is himself.” 

“Rhoda, darling, what are you going to say? You 
surely don’t think I’m lacking in love for you.” 

“On the contrary, you have given me more devotion 
than I deserved, and you’ve filled so much that was empty 
in my life.” 

“Why should you put me off, Rhoda? Why are you 
so evasive? Tell me out and out all about it. Is it that 
odd notion of yours that you cannot marry, or that you’re 
afraid of your independence? I shan’t ask any more of 
your independence as a wife than I have as a friend. Why 
can’t you tell me frankly?” 

Rhoda was silent and tears began to rise to her half- 
closed lids, tears that were so different from the dew- 
drops of melting snow. Sorry as I was that I had blurted 
out so gracelessly, I felt that I had a right to know. 

“Lee, forgive me if I hurt your feelings, forgive me if I 
refresh an old sorrow, but do you know why Josephine 
threw herself into the sea?” 

Josephine was the name of my wife. 

“I really don’t know, Rhoda. Nobody knows. We all 
had our theories to explain away the facts, but we have 
no means to verify the theories. I surely don’t know. 
Josephine had much to be unhappy about. We had been 
married a little over two years and her marriage seemed to 
be without joy. But she had also a good deal to be happy 
about. She might have had a worse husband, but she 
couldn’t have had a better son, though it was hard to tell 
either of those things then. If she had wanted a ii\orce, 
I shouldn’t have said a word. I think she loved me in an 
odd way, and I think she took the plunge in a moment of 


HORATIO'S STORY 


96 

derangement. She was more than excitable, she could be 
violently wrought up. She would come to me in a state 
of hysteria and interrupt my work no matter what I was 
doing. She would quarrel bitterly and then I would kiss 
her and tell her that everything was all right, and she 
would be abnormally happy for a day or so. She may 
have been seized with one of those moments of doubt and 
hate and, unable to talk it over with anyone, she threw 
herself into the water.” 

“I don’t believe it, Lee. I was terribly interested in your 
marriage. You thought that I dropped out of your life 
after your elopement, but in reality I dropped out of your 
sight merely. I knew Josephine a little better than you 
had any idea. I think that her suicide was as deliberate 
as any I’ve ever heard about. She was profoundly misera¬ 
ble. She was miserable because she believed that she could 
never make a dent on your mind.” 

“What do you mean by that, Rhoda ?” 

“Josephine was a little the way I am but she didn’t talk 
about it as much as I do. She was proud, ambitious, ready 
to suffer to be what she wanted to be. Josephine was for¬ 
tunately so well off that life was never a question of to 
have or not to have—as Oscar Wilde said of one of his 
characters. She wanted to be more than a wife and 
mother, but she didn’t really know what she did want. 
I thought she wanted to make an impression upon you as 
a mind and character, and I think she came to the conclu¬ 
sion that that was impossible.” 

“She was damned impatient, if that was why she did it!” 

“She loved you, adored you, and thought you a model 
husband in every way. She hoped that the child would 
make a difference, but apparently it didn’t. It was your 
intellectual superiority that forced her into solitude, and 
she was not big enough to stand solitude.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 9; 

“Even if what you say is true, Rhoda, there is no reason 
why you should feel that way.” 

“I’m the same way, Lee, only I’m more conscious of it. 
I could love you and I could love your child, but I can’t 
have a husband on terms of inequality. I should rather 
remain a spinster.” 

“But we are on terms of equality, Rhoda.” 

“Because I am with you only a short part of your time; 
because we meet when we are at leisure and have no prob¬ 
lem to face together. I am positive that I can never mean 
anything to your mind and, as our friendship is the thing 
in life that I prize most, for God’s sake don’t marry me 
and condemn me to jealousy!” 

“If your freedom means so much to you, Rhoda, I 
don’t want to be the one to invade it. Let’s go back and 
play with Went.” 

“You will not be unhappy over this ?” she asked. 

“There is no happiness for me, one way or the other.” 

“Or for me.” 

“For you!” I said, almost to myself. “How do you 
know ?” 


CHAPTER VI 


The wind shifted briskly to the west, shaking the snow 
from the trees, and destroying the soft tones of the land¬ 
scape. The foreground revealed itself cold, clear, and 
defiant. We quickened our pace; both of us were uncom¬ 
fortable. Rhoda turned her head toward me now and then 
and her lips moved slightly as though she wished to speak 
but could not quite reach the point of breaking the silence 
with words. I, too, wished to relieve the tense atmosphere 
in which our stifled clash of emotion had left us, but we 
were so close that a word would have seemed to touch as 
concretely as a caress, and I was unable to make utterance 
which, in one way or another, would not have made the 
immediate situation worse. 

Perhaps a change in tactics would have shattered her 
barriers, but I could not see a real advantage in that. She 
would raise them again, stronger than ever. Nor could 
I, at a moment when both of us were so painfully sensitive, 
make some innocuous remark grossly belying my real state 
of mind. 

Years later Rhoda said that she never treasured up any¬ 
thing against me so much as my silence that night. Her 
only answer to my protest was that “if you had really felt 
for me what you should have, you would have bantered 
along with characteristic Anglo-Saxon nonchalance, hiding 
even from yourself what your sentiments were.” I did 
not argue the matter, and perhaps in that restraint I mas¬ 
tered the art of a nonchalance she never knew about. 

When we reached the door I was surprised by observing 
a hat and coat in the foyer. 

“We have a visitor, Rhoda.” 

98 


HORATIO’S STORY 99 

‘Til go at once, Lee. Say good-night to Went for me.” 

“Nonsense.” 

“Mr. O’Flarity Child, sir,” said Jenkins, coming to the 
door and taking our things. “I asked him to wait.” 

“You’d like him, Rhoda.” 

“I’m sure I should hate him,” she said, falling back and 
pretending to hide in the hangings. 

“Come,” I ventured, taking her arm and urging her, 
“he’s not a bad sort, O’Flarity Child. You might like him. 
He’ll agree with you in some of your hates.” 

We could hear Wentworth in the library; his tone had 
poise beyond his years. “Don’t get up, Mr. Child,” he 
was saying. “My father will be in presently. I just heard 
him at the door.” 

This was too much for my kinswoman. “I’ll be good,” 
she said and we entered the room. Wentworth and Mr. 
Child were seated opposite each other on the divan; the 
latter stood up and came to meet us. 

He was a student of about four and twenty, pale, timid, 
Christ-like. He was tall and thin, and, though I thought 
he might become a man of physical gracefulness, I con¬ 
cluded intuitively that he would never acquire robustness 
or good form. He wore a four-button, oxford gray sack 
suit with thin trousers and black shoes; his poplin shirt 
was white and the necktie black. What suggested the 
martyrdom of the early Christians was the infrequent com¬ 
bination of sensitive humility mingled with firmness of 
mind and self-assertion that superseded each other in the 
play of his expression. His lips smiled delicately, and 
there was unusual roundness and depth to his slightly pro¬ 
truding eyes. His forehead escaped obstinacy, receding 
without a sharp line into the softness of his light, attractive 
hair of no particular colour. His voice had a soft and at 
times tremulous quality that some people thought effemi¬ 
nate. 


100 


HORATIO’S STORY 


What was most striking in this young man, not only 
at first meeting but always thereafter, was the brightness, 
the activity, the sheer size of his eyes. One liked to watch 
them, to look and talk into them; one felt that he was more 
to be reached through the eyes than the ears, and he evi¬ 
dently liked to have one think so. They would meet you 
head on, linger, twinkle, and at times seem positively to 
sparkle with vivacity. That night, and usually, in fact, he 
appeared to swing his whole personality and character 
from them. 

The year previous his friend Aberdeen Duke, the por¬ 
trait painter, created a sensation by a picture of O’Flarity 
Child that hangs to this day in the Boston Museum of Fine 
Arts. He posed his subject in a soft, silk shirt, open at 
the throat and displaying a perfect neck that Child always 
said belonged to someone else. His hands were clasped 
behind his back and the expression upon his face gave me 
the impression of a sort of impersonal sympathy, a com¬ 
passionate sympathy, one that understood tragedy but 
had so far escaped being crushed by it. The intense blue 
of his eyes and the flush of burnt sienna over the cheek 
bones, contrasted with the tender pallor of his skin, were 
the most striking features of the likeness as well as the 
centre of decorative vitality in the portrait. 

I knew him pretty well. I had known him first as a 
member of Phil. 163a, and I had had the pleasure of en¬ 
countering him subsequently in my other courses. He 
was, as I believe I already mentioned, the only student ever 
to receive from me the maximum grade in that course. 
This was because I had found him generally head and 
shoulders above the best students who were reckless enough 
to come my way. His mind worked faster, his knowledge 
was more extensive and upon better foundations, and he 
had a tireless, restless quality of intellectual curiosity that 
made it a delight to have him before you. I found his mind 


HORATIO’S STORY, ioi 

less original and less forceful than that of many a num¬ 
skull, but taken all in all it measured up the best article 
that the dean had registered in my courses up to that 
time, or has since. 

And he was one of those students to distinguish him¬ 
self, it would seem, almost equally in a wide range of sub¬ 
jects. It astonished me to learn that he had done excep¬ 
tionally well in history and politics and that one member 
of the faculty urged him repeatedly to pursue a group of 
studies aimed at making a man useful in the diplomatic 
service. In O’Flarity Child the university had broken its 
precedents. At last we had produced a man, or at least 
harboured a man, not a mere critic, educator, or argufier, 
but a man possessing all these qualities and an undeveloped 
creative faculty as well. The tradition that followed his 
name asserted that he was by nature a poet, a dreamer of 
dreams. 

Out of reverence for this mild but persistent Napoleonic 
legend, people talked of him in hushed voices. What he 
said was repeated, and what people thought he believed 
they discussed seriously. Perhaps one of the reasons for 
this was that he permitted himself to say very little, and 
thought, when at all, in secret. 

Once or twice while on my way home from the club at 
night, I met him on the road. He walked briskly, carried 
a stick, and seemed to enjoy his exercise. Once I per¬ 
suaded him to come home with me, and this was followed 
by other visits until we got to know each other fairly well. 
He was a solitary student and hardly realized the stir he 
created among the gray beards of Arlington, and he re¬ 
treated from every attempt that was made to draw him 
out of his solitude and into the supposedly brilliant circle 
of professors and students who set the pace at the univer¬ 
sity. He steadfastly refused to make one of them and 
succeeded in making his retreat without giving offense, 


102 HORATIO’S STORY 

and if modifying his reputation in any way by these tactics, 
he added to it. 

I found him a simple soul. His father was a St. Louis 
retail merchant of small means. O’Flarity was an only 
child and thought to suffer from a dangerous irregularity 
of the heart. He was brought up, it would seem, practically 
as an invalid and not permitted to exert himself physically. 
Not unnaturally he pursued his studies and shunned the 
robust pleasures, the dissipations, and the sports of healthy 
youth. The colouring of his complexion and the slightness 
of his build gave credence to the opinion of his heart, and 
lay persons who professed an insight into medical diagnosis 
would shake their heads and talk apprehensively of tubercu¬ 
losis. 

The accidents of childhood, however, are not always 
without compensation, and I doubt very much whether the 
development of O’Flarity Child would have taken the 
direction it did had it not been for these circumstances. 
He once told me that he had been raised with scrupulous 
care and financed in his quest for an education far beyond 
the means of his parents. They had always urged him not 
to take remunerative work, and he devoted himself exclu¬ 
sively to his studies, perhaps increasing thereby his capac¬ 
ity for going without things he loved by nature. 

Of course I was more annoyed than surprised to find 
him in the library that night. I had wanted, of all things, 
to have some further conversation with Rhoda. During 
the previous week I had expected him to drop in at almost 
any time upon a small matter of university business. Why 
should he have taken the one day in the week when life 
was worth living without any business or without more 
guests ? But despite my annoyance at his unwitting intru¬ 
sion, I could not restrain a wave of friendliness as I 
smiled and took his hand. 

“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Child,” I said. “I should like 


HORATIO’S STORY,. 103 

you to meet my cousin, Miss Lispenyard. Rhoda, I should 
like to present Mr. Child. I see that you have already 
made friends with Wentworth.” 

He shook my hand with remarkably little vigour for a 
college student and bowed in the general direction of 
Rhoda, who dropped into the divan next to Wentworth. 
“I came to see you about a university matter,” he said. 
“I thought Sunday afternoon would find you more at 
leisure than you usually are, but perhaps I should have 
done better to come later in the week.” 

“Don’t think of it,” I said. “Sit down and have supper 
with us.” 

“With great pleasure,” said Child deliberately, choosing 
the most remote chair and hiding himself in the shadows. 
Jenkins began to lay the table. 

“Father,” said Wentworth, “you were gone a terribly 
long time and I had a hard time persuading Mr. Child to 
wait.” 

“You did very well, Wentworth, and I hope you didn’t 
tire waiting for us.” 

“No, your friend was most amusing.” 

“Went,” said Rhoda, getting up and putting her hand 
on his head, “suppose you say good-night to everyone and 
then let me go upstairs with you.” 

It always amazed me to observe with what pleasure 
Wentworth would respond to Rhoda’s summons, no matter 
if even the irksome formality of going to bed were sug¬ 
gested. I lit a cigarette and followed Mr. Child into the 
shadows. 

“I suppose you came to see me about the Dunhill Me¬ 
morial Fellowship,” I said. 

“Yes. The chairman of the committee said that your 
vote could never be obtained unless the applicant had a 
personal interview with you.” 

“I prefer it that way,” I admitted. I had known that 


104 


HORATIO’S STORY 


his name had been raised for the fellowship and it had 
seemed to me that I did not have the right to withhold 
from him my vote if he really wanted it. No other candi¬ 
date had impressed me the least favourably. 

“I’m very anxious to get it,” he said pleasantly. 

“The Dunhill Memorial is a travelling fellowship that 
carries with it a stipend of two thousand dollars per annum 
and requires matriculation in one of a specified list of 
European universities for two years, or two for one year 
each.” 

“That’s the way I understand it.” 

“And I believe it’s the most sought-after fellowship we 
have.” 

“Undoubtedly.” 

“And I think the only question that I should have asked 
you is the one that you have anticipated, whether you really 
want it. So far as your work goes I think you deserve it 
if anybody does.” Biennially, when the problem of the 
fellowship arises, I have a forlorn hope that some day a 
candidate will appear of no great record or promise, but 
a man or woman who could prove to my satisfaction that 
the one thing he loved in life more than studying philoso¬ 
phy for its own sake was the indulgence of sitting down 
and philosophizing without premeditation or ulterior mo¬ 
tive. Such a person would certainly be hard to find, and 
he certainly would not be found decorated with the laurels 
of the university. 

“What do you mean, Mr. Seebohm?” he asked. “It is 
hardly reasonable to suppose that I should apply if I did 
' not really want it.” 

“My point is that there isn’t any sense in taking that 
fellowship just because you’ve earned it, unless you really 
want to study. Young men come to college for different 
reasons, and they excel or fail for different reasons. I, 
for one, thought that you did substantial work with me, 


HORATIO’S STORY, 105 

but I never knew nor cared much until this minute whether 
you did it because you liked it or for some other reason. 
What do you expect to do in life, Mr. Child, if you don’t 
mind my asking?” 

“I expect to be a professional philosopher.” 

“My God !” I cried, “Another !” And then, remembering 
myself, I added: “I can’t ever bring myself to think of 
philosophy as a profession, but I suppose it is as a matter 
of actual fact. Anyway, there aren’t too many of us in 
the world surely.” I liked him for saying his mind frankly 
and not trying to figure out what I wanted him to say. 

“I think I have more aptitude for this than anything 
else, and the university holds open a place for me if I do 
creditably with the fellowship. Of course I can’t help 
being strongly influenced by my health. I think the uni¬ 
versity life combines mental activity with physical inac¬ 
tivity in a good ratio for me.” 

There was a light step, and looking up I saw that Rhoda 
had come down. She paused by the table which was set 
back from the fireplace and lighted with shaded candles. 

“That’s all I am going to say on the subject and you 
may count on my vote. Please come and see me before 
you sail if your candidacy is successful. I should like to 
say something that would be superfluous now.” 

“Why do you both sit in darkness?” asked Rhoda. 

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Let’s come out of it.” 

I excused myself to go and see if I could persuade my 
small boy to go to sleep, and as I passed upstairs it seemed 
an immense relief to be alone if only for a moment. Enter¬ 
ing Wentworth’s room absent-mindedly I picked up the 
Bible from among his books. Turning down the light, 
except one near the foot of his bed, I turned the leaves, 
searching for a thumpingly dull passage that would give 
him an opportunity to fall asleep quickly. 

“Please don’t read to me, father!” he said emphatically. 


io6 HORATIO’S STORY 

I looked up; a glance assured me that Wentworth was 
testy and excited. Had I not been preoccupied myself I 
should have realized it before taking down a book from 
the shelf; I had done so automatically, without as much 
as looking at the boy, for he demanded reading at all times, 
even at his meals or his play. It was a sort of Greek 
chorus in his life, and the only way to escape it was to 
take him for a brisk walk or persuade him to indulge in 
some other form of physical exertion. My first response 
to his caution was to give no heed to it, but he rebelled 
so rarely for a boy of his age that I had a habit of trying 
to find out what was wrong when he complained. That 
night he was more than excited ; he was not far from tears. 

“I really couldn’t follow you,” he added, trying to con¬ 
ceal his emotion. 

Sitting on the edge of his bed I took hold of one of his 
feet playfully through the covers, but it remained limp; 
he did not want to play. “What’s the matter, old man?” 
I asked, looking into his face. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Are you sure you don’t know, Went?” 

“Sure,” he almost sobbed. 

“Went, old gentleman, if you were God, right now, and 
could do anything you wanted to do; if you could just give 
orders, old fellow, what would you do ?” He turned over, 
faced me, forgot his tears, and actually smiled. 

“Well,” he interjected with intense satisfaction, “I’d 
just tell Rhoda that she’s not to go away and leave us.” 

“What makes you think she’s going to leave us, Went?” 

“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” he said sorrowfully, unable 
to sustain the illusion that he was God. 

“Nonsense, Went, I’m sure you didn’t do anything that 
hurt Rhoda.” 

“Yes, I did. I asked her why you and she didn’t marry, 
and she didn’t like it a bit. She said I shouldn’t ask ques- 


HORATIO’S STORY 


107 

tions like that. And then, I was talking about what we 
were going to do in the spring, and she said she wouldn’t 
be with us in the spring, and I didn’t understand.” 

“I’ll talk to you about it in the morning, Went. You’ll 
understand better when the sun is shining, and you won’t 
feel so bad about it either. Just before sleep the imagina¬ 
tion is treacherous; it puts things in a false light. It makes 
us think that only the tenderly emotional things in life 
count. You couldn’t help asking that question, and Rhoda 
couldn’t help being hurt. Now, I want you to go to sleep.” 

“I’m so unhappy, father.” He was obviously pleading 
for me to stay, but supper was served and my guests were 
waiting, 

“You have a great deal to be happy for, Went,” I said, 
as I opened the window and went to the door, trying to 
console him more by the tone of my voice than what I 
actually put into words. “If I had had your emotion, my 
dear boy, my life had been very different indeed.” 

“Good-night, father.” 

“Good-night.” I shut the door and started down the 
hall. There are some experiences that have the effect of 
making one for the moment more sensitive than one 
habitually is; one’s observation then seems to have the 
advantage of special senses. The wind whistled audibly 
through the door as I blocked it with one foot for an 
instant to prevent it from slamming, and in that instant, 
beyond anything that I could see or hear, it seemed to me 
that my boy buried his head with a sob in his pillow. 

It was clear to me that he was getting on rapidly to 
the stage where a boy can neither fathom the meaning nor 
escape the consequences of some fundamental domestic 
relationships. What had Rhoda been saying to the boy? 
It was not usual for her to confide in him in matters of 
any importance without first speaking to me. We had 
worked out our scheme of bringing him up together; it 


io8 


HORATIO’S STORY 


had been a subject of frequent and intimate conference. 
Had she suddenly decided to throw everything over ? Per¬ 
haps she had been more moved by our conversation than 
she cared to let me know and had reached the conclusion 
that, unable to give all, she had best give nothing. 

Changes come over characters quickly. She may have 
thought with her alertness of intuition that her antagonism 
to marriage was a mere phantom. It was her resistance to 
me that made her proceed generally as though marriage 
were an impossibility. 

I went down feeling profoundly unhappy and nervously 
uncertain. Looking up as I entered the library I saw that 
dinner was served. Mr. Child had come out of the 
shadows and he and Rhoda waited for me in front of the 
fireplace. The pink cheeks of my former student were 
even rosier than they had been before I left the room, 
as he stood carelessly leaning against a chair with his hands 
in his pockets. Rhoda struck my vision in profile. She 
was at her best, proud, eager, inwardly excited; her hands 
were clasped behind her; and, as she seemed to lean 
slightly forward on her toes, she observed her companion 
acutely. 

“And then, after your travels, what are you coming back 
to the university for?” she was asking as I approached 
them. 

His eyes caught the reflection of the fire. “I like stay¬ 
ing on at Arlington,” he said. 

“Ridiculous, I think, for a young man to hang about the 
university too long.” 

“Why?” he asked pleasantly. 

“You’ll bury yourself alive.” 

“Perhaps you can suggest something better to do, 
Rhoda,” I said. 

“Better than burying oneself alive?” 


HORATIO'S STORY 


109 

“I’m not willing to admit that returning to the university 
is just that, but let’s sit down first.” 

The table was a rather narrow oblong and I placed both 
of my guests opposite me. Rhoda looked up excitedly, 
fearing that she had wounded me, that she had cast a slur 
upon my race, as it were. She wanted instantly to throw 
her denial upon me, but the presence of Mr. O’Flarity 
Child restrained her. I tried to convey the impression 
that I was not offended, but lost some time in doing so. 
I suffered then, as now, from an inability to meet an 
emotional situation directly; something had to be done 
to close the incident after which I could give an able 
post mortem on what my sentiments had actually been. 

“I’m afraid we assumed that you dined in the middle of 
the day, Mr. Child. I hope that this simplicity will leave 
you no regrets.” 

“I did dine at noon,” he said, breaking his bread with 
an assuring smile. “Regrets would be unthinkable.” 

“You were saying, Rhoda,” I went on, “that a young 
man buried himself alive at Arlington, and I said I 
couldn’t agree. Now that I come to think of it, it might 
be better natured of me not to argue it too insistently as 
I have some personal prejudice in the matter. I might 
seem to be defending myself before I was attacked.” 

“I didn’t mean it that way, Lee.” 

“Of course not, but you still think that Mr. Child is 
making a mistake in thinking that he should return to 
Arlington to devote his life . . .” 

“That’s the rub. It all depends on what he expects to 
do when he does return.” 

“I’m afraid you’re playing on both sides, Rhoda.” 

“Why not let me decide that when I come to it,” said 
Mr. Child, looking up in his conciliatory manner. 

“As usual,” said Rhoda, “I’m guilty of vast rudeness.” 

“Oh, not at all,” said Child. 


no 


HORATIO'S STORY 


“Yes, it certainly was rude of me to call you to an 
account for your possible conduct some two or three years 
hence. There can’t be much argument as to that, as you 
would say,” she added, nodding in my direction. 

“There might be,” I admitted. 

“Well, then,” said Mr. Child, “let me say that I don’t 
much care whether you were rude or not.” 

“Thanks,” said Rhoda, beaming. 

“I rather like the speed with which you got down to 
the important things in life. Most people would have 
asked me what I thought about something that I never 
thought much about.” 

We passed on to a discussion of other things, of the 
university in general, and later, over our cigars, of our 
own department, much to the regretted silence of Rhoda. 
It was of interest to me to find out to the ranks of which 
of the contending schools of contemporary philosophy this 
student would be likely to ally himself on the completion 
of his studies. Much to my amazement he seemed to me 
lacking in conviction in matters that he thought of suffi¬ 
cient importance to preoccupy him for the rest of his life. 
This lack of conviction, however, militated in favour of 
the width and intimacy of his knowledge and the freedom 
of his judgment. 

“I have to go,” he said early in the evening. 

“So do I,” said Rhoda, much to my surprise. “May 
I give you a lift anywhere? Which way do you go?” 

“To Arlington.” 

“No distance at all.” 

“Come again some time, Mr. Child,” I urged as he was 
going, “come and see me as a friend instead of as a chair.” 

“Gladly,” he said, and they were both shortly gone. 

I met Rhoda a few days later. “I have a new beau,” 
she cried and laughingly gave me an account of their ride 
to Arlington. 


HORATIO'S STORY 


hi 


“Shall I put the windshield up?” she had asked him 
when they had seated themselves in her little speedster. 
The sky had cleared, the moon and stars had come out 
sharply, and the wind had calmed considerably. 

“However it suits you, Miss Lispenyard.” 

“I can’t make much speed on account of the snow.” 

“So much the better; it’s a fine night.” 

“Well, I’ll leave it down; the engine will keep us warm 
enough after we get going.” They sat in front of the 
house for a moment while the engine warmed itself and 
they were off slowly, more because the snow veiled the 
footing than obstructed their progress. 

“May I reverse the order and ask you what you do in 
life?” O’Flarity Child asked quite sincerely. 

“I’m a journalist; I’m a journalist of a very low calibre, 
but I hope to be better some day.” 

“What made you decide to do that of all things?” 

“Being a woman stands less in my way in journalism 
than in most of the things I could do.” 

“Is it your ambition to give up journalism and write 
books some day?” 

“No, all I want to be is a top-notch journalist.” 

“I suppose one could have something of a career at it 
if one stuck hard enough.” 

“I hope so,” said Rhoda with a smile of satisfaction as 
she regained the ruts and stopped the car from a momen¬ 
tary skidding. 

“I should have told you, Miss Lispenyard, that one 
reason why I figure on going back to Arlington is that 
I have heart trouble, and I think that life is suited to my 
physical temperament.” 

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” 

“That’s why I’m burying myself alive, as you call it.” 

“Oh, please don’t ever remind me of having said such 
a mean thing!” Rhoda had gone through life saying harsh 


112 


HORATIO'S STORY 


little things and the nearest she came to sweetness was in 
her repentance of them. 

The moon was shining through a fleecy cloud and by 
its pale blue light seemed to add to the cold. Rhoda had 
been right, the heat from the engine kept them perfectly 
warm; it was only the breeze in their faces that was icy. 
Mr. O’Flarity Child lapsed into silence. He looked down 
at the road and the sharp receding shadows from the head¬ 
lights. Rhoda wondered what he was thinking about and 
what his emotions were. She was driving cautiously, feel¬ 
ing her way with care foreign to her nature. The glare 
from her headlights made the snow too blinding, and she 
found it difficult to keep to the road. Already she had 
overheated the radiator; the steam rose from the cap and 
was carried back by the wind, beautiful in the moonlight. 
Suddenly there was the sound of choking and coughing in 
the motor and after a few vigorous, ominous explosions 
from parts of the car that should remain quiet, Rhoda 
drew up to the right and stopped. 

“Anything wrong ?” asked her passenger. 

“Just overheated, I think.” 

“I don’t know anything at all about motors, Miss Lis- 
penyard.” 

“Neither do I, but we might wait and let it cool before 
I start to bother.” 

“Yes, you might burn yourself.” 

“It’s most disagreeable.” 

“What made it overheat?” he asked, instantly curious. 
“Does it always do this?” 

“I’ll see if I can find out for you. I’ll get out and look 
if you don’t mind my stepping over you.” With her hand 
on the seat over his shoulder she half vaulted over him 
to the step before he had time to pick himself up. Then 
he got down and followed her languidly. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


Ii3 

“It’s outrageously hot,” said Rhoda. “I shouldn’t have 
done that.” 

“Have a cigarette? I rather like stretching my legs. 
I’m not used to riding with my feet so high. It’s so com¬ 
fortable that it makes me stiff. Ordinarily I sit up or 
lie down, but that tries to do both at once.” 

“Thanks,” said Rhoda, and in the flare as he made to 
light her cigarette she glanced at his face for an instant. 
He was watching the match with his bright eyes as she 
inhaled awkwardly. He gripped his own cigarette loosely 
and seemed more intent upon a boyish smile that re¬ 
minded her of Wentworth. Something in his manner sug¬ 
gested that he did not think the speedster quite dignified. 
She turned to the machine. 

“Here’s the trouble! I forgot to open this leather 
radiator cover and let the air in before we started.” She 
slipped it off and put it away. “The water has stopped 
boiling already; we’ll be off in a minute.” 

“It’s quite jolly here,” said O’Flarity Child. “I’m in 
no hurry at all.” 

“It’s a bit mean to offer to take a fellow home on a 
cold winter’s night and then keep him standing on the 
road.” 

“I’m enjoying myself immensely—ever so much more 
than if I had walked.” 

“Do you like walking?” Rhoda had the apologetic tone 
of a woman who wishes to retain the control of the con¬ 
versation but doesn’t know exactly what to do with it. 

“Yes, ever so much. It’s the one relief that I have 
from work. It has a way of taking out of my mind all 
the serious thoughts that I may have. It frees the emo¬ 
tions, too, and gives me a perfectly delightful half- 
dreaming, half-conscious view of the world.” 

“Your relaxation,” said Rhoda, “must be remarkably 
complete.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


114 

“When I take a walk after I’m through working, Miss 
Lispenyard, only those things seem real and of importance 
that, when I am working, seem of unreality.” 

“It sounds quite wonderful to me,” said Rhoda, capri¬ 
ciously. “You must be sorry I didn’t let you walk home 
by yourself.” 

“Why, I can walk alone any night, Miss Lispenyard. 
I’ve enjoyed meeting you immensely.” 

“But you shouldn’t say what you don’t mean.” 

“You know. Miss Lispenyard, the reason why I have 
never been able to get on socially is that when an obvious 
remark seems to me true and in point, I simply can’t re¬ 
frain from letting it out. Of course the same trait is 
responsible for my getting on as a student. A good many 
chaps make an awful mess of things because they’re afraid 
of saying the naive and simple thing. They invent the 
most stupid rot to create the impression of ingenuity 
with their professors.” There was something in that 
speech that seemed persuasive to Rhoda; she was attracted 
and disarmed by his candour. 

“Well, if one confidence deserves another, there are 
two reasons why I have done badly socially. One is that 
I never wanted to do well; the other is that I have been 
too quick to detect insincerity, and have often detected 
it where it didn’t exist.” 

He didn’t quite know whether she was teasing him, 
or at least coaxing him. It was not altogether clear why 
such observations should be called confidences, but after 
all her self-criticism was more intimate than his own, so 
he continued along the same track, to his own amazement 
and Rhoda’s amusement. 

“That’s a great pity. You know, people think I don’t 
like social life, that I shun it, that I like to be alone. It 
isn’t so; I love it! It’s only that I’m so damned unsuc¬ 
cessful at it that I know enough to keep out of it.” 


HORATIO’S STORY, 115 

“I think the motor is cool enough to start now, and if 
you think you’re really not sorry that you didn’t walk 
we’ll try her again. I wanted to make sure that you had 
no regrets before setting you down.” She loosened the 
caked snow from her satin slippers, and O’Flarity, after 
a moment’s hesitation and reflection, laughed broadly. 

‘‘Suppose I should say that I was not quite convinced 
that it was better to take your lift,” he said as he climbed 
in after her. “Would you keep me here longer trying to 
convince me?” 

“No, I’d give you up.” The motor started vigorously 
and after speeding it up two or three times she reduced 
the gasoline to a minimum and listened to the muffled 
puff’s of the explosion with vast satisfaction. “Nothing 
wrong with the essence,” she said with a smile as she 
started. 

They rode slowly and remained silent for some time. 
Then Rhoda turned her head slightly and remarked: 
“You know, it hasn’t occurred to me for some years 
that anyone rational would think of social life in terms 
of success, that is, of course, unless he’s going in for 
big stuff and expects to sink or swim through it.” 

“Really?” said Child solemnly. He was thinking of 
something else, and presently he broke the silence with 
what Rhoda took to be soliloquy. “Excuse me if I think 
it’s all slightly absurd. I go to Professor Seebohm’s on 
academic business and expect to get a grilling on the 
Dunhill Memorial Fellowship. Instead he invites me to 
supper and says that all he wanted to know was whether 
I really wanted it. And then I meet a charming journal¬ 
ist who takes me home reclining in a speedster that has 
the mercy to get overheated on a cold night, so that 
my pleasure is thereby prolonged.” 

“How long could you go on that way if I didn’t inter¬ 
rupt you?” 


n6 


HORATIO’S STORY 


“You know,” he said, paying no attention to her dis¬ 
couragement, “I don’t leave that campus for months ex¬ 
cept to go walking, and I don’t meet a soul.” 

“I didn’t know that, Mr. Child, but from what you 
previously said I thought you had somebody to dream 
about and so no need for companionship.” 

“No. The point in dreaming is that you can always 
have somebody to dream about without having anybody 
in your life.” 

Rhoda tried not to let herself observe that her cheeks 
were warmer than ordinarily. She should have liked to 
stop the car again; she wanted to have it out with her¬ 
self, to ask herself what she felt and why. But the odd 
part of it was that she didn’t really care, the desire was 
not imperative, and the alternative of going on seemed 
to her in itself more pleasant than anything she had done 
in years. But the answer seemed to come without the 
process of introspection as she glanced at O’Flarity 
Child out of the corner of her eye. She had been living 
too long herself against the whole world. Even toward 
me, her best friend, there was no relaxation of her re¬ 
sistance. Now she suddenly found herself in the dreamy 
state that her companion had just described. Her work, 
her career, her personality, seemed for the moment 
nothing to her; she forgot even her fight against the 
world for her rights. She had come, in the last half 
hour or so, into the world that she had always thought 
enemy territory, into the world where she had to be a 
woman among men and women, and she found the 
dreaded haunt of the weak so very delightful. 

They joined the tracks of the Cambridge trolley on 
Massachusetts Avenue, where the snow had been swept 
clean. Rhoda welcomed the opportunity to drive nor¬ 
mally, for in her excitement she had found it extremely 
difficult to go slowly and with deliberation over the snow- 


HORATIO’S STORY 


ii 7 

hidden road from Belmont. They were in Arlington 
in a moment. 

“Where shall I drop you?” 

“Drop me at the corner drug store. Will you have a 
hot drink before you go on?” 

“Thank you, no. I want to get my car in the garage 
and go home.” 

“Thanks for the lift,” he said as they drew up to the 
curb. 

“You’re welcome,” she said as he got out. Her foot 
slipped off the brake; she put in the gear. 

“May I call on you some time?” he asked, the wind 
blowing his soft hair across his forehead as he stood 
with his hat in his hand. 

“Yes, indeed. Good-night to you.” And taking her 
foot slowly off the clutch she moved into the night. Mr. 
Child entered the drug store and ordered his constitu¬ 
tional; Rhoda drove recklessly to Boston feeling sud¬ 
denly rejuvenated and joyously happy. 

That same night, however, was a lonely one for me. 
I sat down by the fire in the mood of a man who realizes 
that some changes have to be made in his life that will 
rob him of much that he holds dear. My relationship 
with Rhoda had clouded over. There is something ridicu¬ 
lous in pursuing a friendship where the possibilities have 
been exhausted and the limits reached. There is some¬ 
thing especially painful, after hitting the pace evenly to¬ 
gether for years, to find that suddenly one is defensively 
lagging behind the other, while the other tries to persuade 
the first to follow where his best instincts and emotions 
lead. 

I was unable, that night, to free my thoughts from 
a formal benediction on our friendship that seemed to de¬ 
scend upon me. My first thought was to break away 
boldly and completely; my loss would be so much greater 


n8 


HORATIO’S STORY 


than hers that there would be nothing niggardly in this. 
But there was Wentworth, who also had no other woman 
in his life. He was learning so much from her that I 
could not teach, and he needed her in his way far more 
than I did in mine. It was not that I wanted to shield 
him from the unhappiness of losing Rhoda. Though his 
tears never failed to touch me I thought that the cure 
for them lay in learning to do without happiness. I did 
not observe even then that Rhoda gave him more pleasure 
than pain, but she stimulated his imagination and sym¬ 
pathy, and I thought these of such importance to him 
that I could very easily weather any tormenting emotion 
that might fall to my lot in Rhoda’s society as a naturally 
weak member of the human race. 

Nevertheless, from that afternoon on, I ceased being 
a principal in the narrative at hand, and as an observer my 
position became so far removed from the scenes and char¬ 
acters that much of the detail came to me only after a 
long intervening period. 


CHAPTER VII 


Mr. O’Flarity Child did call presently, and he fol¬ 
lowed his first visit with many others in rapid succession. 
It was noticeable to me from my august chair that some¬ 
thing was happening to the candidate for the Dunhill 
Memorial Fellowship. Not that anything he did or failed 
to do at that late date would have altered his supremacy 
among the rival candidates; the sheer momentum of his 
academic career would have carried him over any momen¬ 
tary embarrassments or lapses. 

But I did observe in the few remaining lectures and 
conferences in which he came before me that his intel¬ 
lectual curiosity gave place to mental inertia; he became 
a disinterested spectator in the lecture room. His un¬ 
usual knowledge that I formerly delighted in calling 
upon was now as inaccessible and hidden-for-the-dust as 
remote volumes in the stacks of the reference library. 
There was no longer the certainty of finding what you 
wanted. Once or twice, as if to prove to us that he was 
not beyond recall, he would show himself animated, active- 
minded, almost argumentative. Not only would he take 
his former place at a leap, but he did it with an assurance 
that I never observed in him previously. 

His appearance changed no less. The colour I had 
thought hectic now blazed into a shade of red, the health 
of which I could no longer doubt. Burnt by the wind, 
excited and feeling an altogether new and expansive 
attitude toward people, he began to look healthy and 
active, though he always fell short of robustness. 

Obviously his best energies were attracted elsewhere, 
and it was hardly shrewd to guess that Rhoda Lispen- 
yard was the source of attraction. 


120 


HORATIO’S STORY 


And of Rhoda I saw very little for a month or two 
after she met Mr. Child. Her work kept her fairly 
busy. Her tilt with the editor of the Boston Journal 
stimulated the competitive side of her nature. While at 
first her impulse was to defend herself, she soon formu¬ 
lated the idea of doing a number of feature stories on 
successful women in the professions and in business, 
and this series occupied her time generally from November 
to June. There were interviews, pictures, and sometimes 
a little travel. 

Her preoccupations alone did not keep her away from 
me, however, and she would find time to run out to 
Belmont to see Wentworth while I was elsewhere. When 
we did meet it was usually apparent that our former in¬ 
timacy could not sustain itself. 

One evening late in January I was preparing a lecture 
when I heard a motor stop at the door. My man having 
retired to his own quarters some time ago, I answered 
the knocker myself. 

“Hello, Lee,” cried Rhoda, as I opened. “May I come 
in?” 

“Why, come in out of the cold, Rhoda. Don’t be child¬ 
ish.” 

“I wasn’t quite sure whether you’d want to see me,” 
she said with mock timidity as I closed the door. 

“May I take your things?” 

“No, I’m not staying a minute.” 

“Well, come in the library, anyway.” 

We did so, and Rhoda sat down impulsively upon 
the floor in front of the fireplace. Reaching into her 
pocket, she pulled out some papers. 

“I brought you this article,” she said. 

“Thanks, I see it’s signed this time. Shall I read it 
now?” 

“No, don’t. Not now.” 


HORATIO'S STORY 


121 


I put it on the desk and then went back to the divan. 
Rhoda threw her sealskin coat back over her shoulders 
and looked solemnly at the fire. Suddenly she smiled 
and broke into a gurgling laugh. 

“What’s so very funny?” 

“It was this afternoon. Do you know Agnes Till- 
more?” 

“No, I don’t—that is, I’ve never met her.” She was 
the leading lady of a Boston stock company, an a-ctress 
I had seen once or twice. 

“She came in this afternoon while I was having a 
discussion with O’Flarity Child. He was in a terribly 
serious mood and it seemed as though all the washers 
had broken in the fountain of erudition and no one could 
shut it ofif. When Agnes came in he kept right on. Agnes 
listened to him patiently while she took off her gloves; 
then she stepped over to his chair and stroked the top of 
his head. O’Flarity finished his paragraph without try¬ 
ing to conceal his annoyance, and then looked up. Agnes 
was waiting for him; she swooped down with a resound¬ 
ing kiss. Then she turned to me : ‘Isn’t he a sweet thing!’ 
she said.” 

“What did Mr. Child do?” 

“Nothing, nothing. But you should have seen his 
face.” 

“Just fancy.” 

“He took his hat and ran, and I’m afraid I shan’t 
see him for a week!” 

“Would that be very serious, not to see O’Flarity Child 
for a week?” 

“You’ve no idea! I can’t explain the way that mere in¬ 
fant has taken hold of me. He sits down and tells me 
all his confidences as though I were an oracle. I don’t 
know what to do about him, and I have a feeling that 
something should be done. Maybe it isn’t fair for me 


122 


HORATIO'S STORY 

to talk this way to you, Lee, but I couldn’t help it be¬ 
cause you’re the only real friend that I have.” 

“Count me your friend for as much or as little as you 

please, Rhoda.” 

It was not that she had anything to tell me. What 
she wanted was someone to talk to. She felt impending 
changes and wanted to grasp her old life tightly before 
it was taken away from her. Rhoda left as impetuously 
as she came, and after she had gone I found it hard to 
prepare my lecture. 

I wanted to be sympathetic, but I could not throw my¬ 
self into Rhoda’s romance as seriously as though it were 
my own. I felt that she was insensitive to expect it of 
me—in fact, I have always thought women less sensitive 
than men—and at the same time I did not think it 
was necessary for her to know, at the moment, how 
I did feel. There was a possibility, I thought, that we 
might become friends again later, and I wished us to 
drift apart naturally for the next few years. 

I had never thought that they would get on with each 
other. What could they have in common? I should 
have thought that Rhoda was too old for him and that 
she would have hated him as a matter of course, as she 
had every other young man I had persuaded her to meet. 
No doubt the accident of their meeting had a great deal 
to do with the success of it. I had not asked her to come 
and dine with the latest thing in eligible young men for 
a delightful girl of nearly thirty whose resistance to 
men approached the supernatural. They had simply col¬ 
lided, much to the momentary inconvenience of myself. 

Probably the source of the attraction was what so 
often brings together friends commonly thought ill 
sorted, a strong-weak combination. 

Not at first realizing the full significance of the affair, 
Rhoda felt strongly drawn to this young man whom she 


HORATIO’S STORY 


123 

insisted upon treating as though he were a great baby. 
She herself was by no means mature for her age, and 
that was one reason for her inability to distinguish be-' 
tween youthfulness and lack of sophistication. What 
was instantly attractive about him was that he was the 
sheltered inmate of an institution of learning and she was 
out in the world earning, if not her living, at least sufficient 
to subsist upon if need be. And he showed every inclina¬ 
tion of remaining a student for the rest of his days. 

He had absorbed enough of her environment during 
the years he studied at Arlington not to seem a stranger 
to her, and their having studied in the same school gave 
them a common ground for conversation and one fertile 
enough to divulge what they really thought and felt 
about life in general. His attitude of mind did not reveal 
the assurance of masculine superiority that offended 
Rhoda wherever she went; the solitude of his existence, 
his preserved naivete, and the suffering innocence of his 
character were all mines of unfailing charm. 

To Rhoda, then, who of all things despised the sem¬ 
blances of the subjection of women, O’Flarity Child 
stood out in striking relief. He was a man of distinction 
beyond his years, and yet he was not ready to tell her 
that her place was to make a home for him. Women 
had always been more of an idea than a reality to him, and 
he had, in sympathy with what he thought the best wis¬ 
dom of his generation, rationalized their place in society 
to one of equality limited only by physical fact. With 
most of the men she had met previously she had always 
felt in their conversation the view that her teaching or 
writing was not really in the outer world, and that her 
work would be dropped upon marriage. They were the 
natural bread-winners and the natural heads of their 
families to be. 

Now Child had never thought of himself as a possible 


124 HORATIO’S STORY 

family man. He eschewed domesticity in all its forms. 
To be sure he was a dutiful and grateful son but he 
never thought of a family life except in terms of his 
parents’ generation. Rhoda erred in thinking his reac¬ 
tion toward her characteristic of his attitude toward 
women. He had none. A desire to marry had never 
entered his head, and women generally occupied no place 
in his scheme of things. They belonged to the excite¬ 
ment of life, to the non-intellectual activity of men who 
fought in the world where he intended to study. There 
was something monastic if not spiritual in the renuncia¬ 
tions that he assumed on account of his frail health. 

Rhoda attracted him because she was unlike the young 
women he had taught himself to avoid, and who had, quite 
naturally, always left him out. She was four years 
older than he, she had had more varied and vivid expe¬ 
rience, and he found her more companionable than any 
woman he had ever met. 

With Rhoda all was joy that spring. The fact that 
O’Flarity frankly stated his intention to remain single 
made her feel perfectly free to take the lead and hold it. 
She would pick him up in the sprightly roadster and 
they would fly out to the suburbs of an afternoon. I 
observed that the hardness toward people that had always 
shocked me in Rhoda seemed to be softening. She 
fought less, hated less, and began to get a great deal 
of joy out of living. Merely from watching her I was 
sure that she was playing the game perhaps unconsciously 
at rather high stakes. 

Rhoda came more often to Arlington than she had since 
she studied there. Temporarily she ran out of stock 
with her famous women, and came out to interview some 
of our staff on the opportunities for women in the various 
professions. One day I met her in the library where I 


HORATIO’S STORY 125 

had stopped to consult the catalogue, and she was busy 
in the very tray of cards I wished to consult. 

“Hello, Rhoda,” I said. “Are you merely looking 
up something as I am, or are you working here all after¬ 
noon ?” 

“Why do you want to know?” 

“I thought that if you have a moment to spare we 
might run out to Belmont and have a drink before we 
settle down for the afternoon.” 

“Why, Lee, you’re getting to be an impossible old 
toper!” 

“Am I to understand by that that you accept my invi¬ 
tation without qualification?” 

“Yes, of course.” 

We gathered our papers and books and drove out to 
Belmont. 

“Is Went in?” she asked at once. 

“No, he’s in Boston, having a riding lesson.” 

“That’s good; I want to talk.” 

“Oh, please do.” 

“My work is running down,” she said as we made 
ourselves comfortable in the library. “I don’t feel like it. 
I’m not doing as well as I did in the fall. I keep writing 
about these women but, although I’m doing better work 
and find it easier to get my interviews all the time. I’m 
losing interest.” 

“I’m terribly sorry you feel that way, Rhoda; I’m sure 
there’s nothing in it. Can’t you hold your interest some¬ 
how?” I had always urged her to keep on with the 
subject of women in the world; it seemed especially suited 
to her imagination and sympathy, and it gave her a coveted 
opportunity to put her most sincere emotion into what 
she wrote. 

“No, Lee, I can’t. I’m going to pieces.” 

“I haven’t noticed it, Rhoda. But you don’t keep me 


126 


HORATIO’S STORY 


in touch with your articles and you know I can’t find 
them, on my own account.” 

“Stupid! If I had written anything I wanted you to 
see you couldn’t possibly have escaped it.” 

“Probably it’s only the spring, Rhoda.” 

“Yes, it makes me lazy and rebellious!” 

“But you have nothing to rebel against but yourself.” 

“Do I need anyone else?” 

“I’ve thought so for some time.” 

“Thanks,” she said, and yielded a forced little laugh 
that made us both uncomfortable for a moment. 

“Do you think I ought to marry, Lee ?” she asked afte*/ 
a moment. 

“Yes.” 

“Do you think I’d be happier?” 

“I don’t know. I suppose, because I’ve wasted my life 
in teaching mostly, I’ve everything mixed in terms of 
knowledge. You might be happier for the experience if 
you like knowledge enough to gain it at the cost of pain. 
Marriage has a way of making people like you and me 
more civilized. It disillusions our ignorance, and it 
necessitates the creation of new illusions. In between 
somewhere it gives you a moment of being natural—a 
moment just long enough to disgust you.” 

“Perhaps he doesn’t want me, Lee. I believe I do 
love the boy. He’s a mere child, a mere schoolboy. 
He’s about six months older than Went, and not half so 
well-mannered. Imagine my being in love with O. F., 
Lee, and yet I think it’s true. I haven’t the slightest 
doubt of it any more. He’s such a wonderful boy!” 

“He certainly is,” I admitted. 

“And Lee, you know all that crazy talk about his hav¬ 
ing heart disease? It’s all a lot of nonsense. I mean, 
he hasn’t anything wrong with him at all. I made him 
go to a specialist in Boston. He had never seen anybody 


HORATIO'S STORY, 


127 

except the family doctor in St. Louis, who hadn’t ex¬ 
amined him for five years. Isn’t it incredible how stupid 
these highbrows can be about themselves!” 

“Well, then, it’s practically settled, isn’t it?” 

She nodded slowly. “I think so, but of course . . 

“Rhoda,” I said, taking her hand, “I want you to be 
so very happy. We shan’t see much of each other during 
the next few years. I don’t want to emphasize anything 
by withdrawing, you understand, but I want us to be 
able to be awfully good friends again later—perhaps bet¬ 
ter than ever.” 

“I know, Lee, and feel exactly the same myself.” 

Went came in stamping proudly with his riding boots, 
and relieved the atmosphere more than he knew. Mr. 
O’Flarity Child joined us at dinner, and we had no luck 
in urging them to stay. 

That night I found it difficult to leave Wentworth after 
he had retired. At length he broke into tears: 

“Rhoda is going to marry Google eyes, and we’re not 
going to see her any more!” he sobbed. 

“I’m afraid you’re right about that, old man,” I said. 

“I hate her for it, and I hate him!” 

“It’s natural that you should feel that way, son, but if 
I were you I should try not to. It isn’t altogether fair; 
a little reflection will convince you of that. Meanwhile 
exercise a little restraint and I’m sure you’ll be happier.” 

It so happened that this was the kind of reply to which 
Went had grown accustomed; he had just reached the 
age where it gave him pleasure to predict such remarks 
for any given set of circumstances, and the comfort was 
therefore not commensurate with the amusement that he 
derived from them. Realizing my error, I tried again. 

“Oh, Went, old man, don’t cry about it! There are 
lots of good fish in the sea!” 

“It’s all right for you to say that, father,” he said, pull- 


128 


HORATIO’S STORY 


ing himself together for a moment, “and I think there 
probably are, but when Rhoda tells me that it won’t 
make any difference to us whether she marries Google 
eyes or not, I know it’s a lie! She’s changed already; 
she’s gone!” 

But in half an hour he was willing to let me read to 
him and in another he was asleep. And in the morning 
he was more interested in knowing something that I could 
not in the nature of things predict; namely, at precisely 
what age, and after how many lessons, would I let him 
ride his horse alone in the park. 

In the middle of June, Rhoda and O’Flarity Child 
were married hastily by the City Clerk, and, after a trip 
to St. Louis, following commencement, they set sail, 
presumably the happiest couple in the world. 

Rhoda admitted to me that she thought giving up jour¬ 
nalism at that time a fatal mistake so far as her life, as 
distinct from Flarey’s, was concerned. She had reached 
the point where her advancement would gain an accelerat¬ 
ing momentum. How she had struggled for the first 
signed interviews in the famous women series! The 
others came so much more easily and finally, at the point 
where the famous women thought that an interview with 
her added to their fame, her interest, her power of ex¬ 
pression, seemed to fail her. What eased her conscience 
was the fact that her love affair with O’Flarity Child 
preoccupied her mind. Could she have found a better 
excuse ? 

Then there was the problem of whether she should go 
abroad. Flarey, of course, had to go, and couldn’t have 
married under any other conditions. And they had to 
marry, beyond argument. 

She did manage, however, to pick up some connections 
as foreign correspondent for the Tribune, but of that 
I shall speak in its proper place—if such there be. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Marriage had the effect of making Rhoda both older 
and younger. The maturity that evaded her as long as 
she sought it directly entered into her life unnoticed. 
The parting of the ways came when, without being wholly 
conscious of it, she began living for others. 

What is important to the young ceases to be of more 
than academic interest to the old. As life tires of the 
pleasures and ambitions of ten or fifteen years* standing, 
it looks up to other gods, other standards to strive for, 
and newer goods to live for. A mellow nature, in my 
view, is one that preserves toward life a freshness of 
touch as the years pass on. 

Just what the old and the new are, it would seem to 
me, can have meaning only in individuals. They depend 
upon the context for their definition. For example I once 
had a student who, as a boy, had imitated and to some ex¬ 
tent absorbed manners and morals belonging to the French 
environment in which he had lived as a youth. On re¬ 
turning to America he fought hard to preserve all these 
characteristics. When he reached thirty, however, these 
gallicisms lost their force and significance in his nature, 
and he became rather cold toward manifestations of 
French civilization. On the other hand I have known 
the opposite to occur, for an American brought up not 
far from Boston Common, ardently puritanical and hard- 
fisted, to find that, later in life, the softer Latin civiliza¬ 
tion seemed to him truer and more inspiring to the yearn¬ 
ings of his soul. 

The first two years of Rhoda’s marriage she always 

129 


1 3 o HORATIO’S STORY, 

thought the most joyful of her life. All sense of person¬ 
ality unfulfilled, of a career unrealized, seemed to leave 
her. She was completely preoccupied with O’Flarity 
Child, and they lived an almost spontaneous, idyllic life 
in France and England. The first year was spent at Ox¬ 
ford ; the second at Paris. What her husband did besides 
take courses, I have never known, or what she did for 
that matter, more than make love to O’Flarity and keep 
house for him after a fashion. They were immensely 
fortunate in having such a long honeymoon, and by spend¬ 
ing it perforce in foreign countries where they were nat¬ 
urally thrown back upon each other. Residence at the two 
universities prevented them from having the distractions 
of travellers in excessive doses, and the general preoccupa¬ 
tion involved in O’Flaritv’s studies saved them from 

* 

honeymooning too intensely. 

It was all so much lovelier than they could have 
planned it. Rhoda adored O’Flarity and in coming to 
love him her whole nature seemed to change as though 
to make room for an emotional life she had previously 
missed. She began to be warmer and more sympathetic, 
not only toward him but toward others. 

Her treatment of men, of course, underwent the most 
thorough change. No longer did she feel the necessity 
for guarding herself, for withholding her emotion. I 
noticed it at once in her letters to me. She would have 
said that she had always withheld her affection from me 
because she could never give all, and I might have been 
a victim of false hopes. But that was not the case; she 
never previously had such consideration for me or anyone 
else. Love came to her with great force during those 
two years, and in her adoration for O’Flarity she grew 
immensely. Through her effort to fathom his character 
she could not well avoid trying to fathom mine as she 
had never done before. Knowledge that builds the mind 


HORATIO'S STORY 


131 

rather than fills it comes by way of comparison. We get, 
usually, only information from books. And although 
Rhoda’s marriage took her out of my life almost com¬ 
pletely for six years, nevertheless, from her letters and 
the brief meetings that we had in 1914 and in 1917, I 
felt that our old friendship was repaid with a new love. 
And her affection touched me deeply. It is an honour 
to be loved by some men and women, if only from a 
distance. 

This new warmth of hers had the effect of quickening 
her sensibility. It seemed as if all the channels of per¬ 
ception became deeper and clearer. She felt things more. 
The implications of the books she read, the significance 
of the philosophy she argued with O’Flarity, the faces 
of the people in the busses and tramways, all gave her 
something for reflection, something to be considered in 
accordance with her new feeling for life. With generous 
sympathy she wanted to touch those who met her with¬ 
out hurting them. Her old way of shunning people van¬ 
ished ; she was amazed to find that people did not always 
repulse her, as she had formerly believed, but that they 
attracted her. 

O’Flarity did not change as rapidly under the influence 
of marriage, and I doubt whether he changed as much. 
Almost immediately his life seemed to divide itself in two. 
As a student he remained his Arlington self, but the facts 
of having a wife and living in more substantial quarters 
altered his leisure so completely that his personality 
divided itself. It was only later, when he ceased being 
primarily a student, that the influence of his marriage 
made itself felt in his work. He was more alive, more 
sensitive, but his understanding was not greatly altered. 
He did not, as a result of his experience, find that some 
book he had read years ago with great enthusiasm had 
a meaning new to him. His mind seemed to proceed very 


i 3 2 


HORATIO'S STORY 


much as before, and the influence that his wife had upon 
him was usually by way of some abstract, intellectual 
medium. When they quarrelled, he was immovable until 
Rhoda could reduce her complaint to a plausible theory. 
That, not the tears, was the beginning of the making-up 
and, when he tried to impress Rhoda with the importance 
of something, it took him ridiculously long because he 
could not express it with an emotional outburst. 

Nevertheless, he was strongly influenced by Rhoda 
and the fact that there seemed to be nothing seriously 
wrong with his heart. Now, he felt joyously, there was 
no longer any need to restrict his action, to limit his 
plans, or to arrange life in such a way as to avoid the 
strenuous. He enjoyed his academic pursuits more be¬ 
cause he did not feel that he clung to them as a last 
alternative, and his vision of his future life became col¬ 
oured with the idea of a career and this was perhaps the 
clearest and deepest manifestation of his wife’s influence. 

She came into his life not only to fulfil it within, but 
as the ambassador from the world outside. He had said 
to her before they were engaged: “Do you know why 
your regard means so very much to me? Everyone I 
have ever known has recognized me only as a student, 
as a mind, as a competitor. You only have found some¬ 
thing in me as a man, as a friend and companion.” She 
had, as it were, taken him out of a monastery, and she put 
constantly before him her picture of the world as she 
had found it. 

Her influence tended first to stimulate his imagination 
on things not altogether abstract. Flarey’s mind had been 
habitually in the clouds. Rhoda brought him into contact 
with people and things and forced him to acquire a feeble 
practical sense. This increased markedly as the years 
passed until it finally overshadowed his powers of abstrac¬ 
tion. First of all, quite naturally, it manifested itself in 


HORATIO’S STORY 133 

matters of household economy and administration. Rhoda 
was too much of a modern woman to run a house ade¬ 
quately, and he found that he had to deal with situations 
that do not occur when a young man lives with his par¬ 
ents or in conventionally ordered dormitories. Rents 
had to be considered and landlords bargained with, and 
from the moment that their cottage had been rented, it 
seemed as if he had to use his practical judgment about 
something or other every day. 

Then Rhoda wished him to learn how to meet people 
with more ease and insight than he had accustomed him¬ 
self to employ when he lived alone. People entered into 
their married life with more significance than they had 
expected. 

But chiefly Rhoda insisted that he develop an intuitive, 
practical way of handling situations where personality 
was involved. She wanted him to have a great career 
and she wanted him to be a man among men. She 
wished that people would accept O’Flarity at once upon 
the valuation she thought he deserved, and instinctively 
she sought little ways of bringing out his qualities and 
attainments at once. In this she was perhaps a little too 
journalistic; she often behaved as though she were giving 
an interview and, when taken to task for it, she would 
say that it was in one sense true, for she was the medium 
through which O’Flarity reached the world. 

Returning early in 1914 an incident occurred on the 
steamer that, while it seemed of no significance then, 
reached out into the future. It had been a pleasant voy¬ 
age up to within a day or so of New York when a com¬ 
paratively rough night revealed the fact that Rhoda was 
the better sailor. The next morning she went out alone 
and took her chair with a book. It was a beautiful and 
calm day, the storm having passed over, and Rhoda read 
aimlessly, now and then laying aside her book. At length 


HORATIO'S STORY 


134 

an Englishman of about thirty-five got up from his chair 
and wandered up to Rhoda. 

‘‘Do you mind if I do some social climbing ?” he asked. 

“What do you mean?” 

“May I sit down for a moment?” 

“Certainly,” said Rhoda. “I’m glad of the company.” 

“My name is Gilman,” he said. “You’ve been so snob¬ 
bish all the way over that you couldn’t possibly have 
known it.” 

“Oh, you really don’t think we’ve been snobbish, do 
you ?” 

“People have a right to be snobbish when they’ve been 
married only ten minutes.” 

“Am I supposed to tell you how long I’ve been mar¬ 
ried ?” 

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. Still, I can guess.” 

They bantered on for a while. There seemed to be 
something attractive about Gilman. He could say the 
most utterly childish things in a way that indicated that 
his real interest lay beyond his literal expression. 

“I’ve had a grand time dreaming about you,” he said. 
“I’ve never seen a couple so interested in each other’s 
conversation. It gave me a picture that I’ve never had 
before although I’ve thought myself a keen observer of 
married life. You’re both so serious, so preoccupied with 
intellectual things.” 

“How do you know what we’ve been talking about?” 

“You can’t deny it.” 

“Suppose I said we were talking about apartments in 
New York?” 

“No one would believe you.” 

“You know, what you just said has set me thinking. 
I wonder what marriage would be like without interest in 
one another’s conversation. You think it quite abnormal, 
don’t you?” 


HORATIO'S STORY 


135 


“Oh, altogether !” 

“Are you married by any chance, I wonder ?” 

“No, but I once was.” 

“Well, then, it must be easy for you to judge.” 

“Not a bit of it, Mrs. Child. Two years of marriage 
is only a beginning.” He paused and Rhoda looked up 
wondering whether he thought that the period of her 
marriage or whether that was the length of time he had 
himself experienced matrimony. He caught her eye, 
smiled, and continued. “In my case it was a very 
wretched beginning, and that was all there was to it. 
So you see my observation of marriage is not based 
wholly upon my own experience.” 

“Well,” said Rhoda, “it certainly doesn’t seem to me 
abnormal to take an interest in my husband’s conversa¬ 
tion.” 

That remark struck Gilman as humorous and he raised 
his eyebrows slightly, a reflex that Rhoda did not interpret 
accurately until he did it a second time. 

“I hope to meet Mr. Child,” he said, smiling pleas¬ 
antly. “I have no doubt that he’s very informing. But 
it takes two to carry on these long dialogues, and I can 
readily understand how delightful it must be. You are 
long married?” 

“How long do you think?” 

“Perhaps fifteen minutes instead of ten.” 

Rhoda was puzzled. She didn’t know whether to re¬ 
gard his jesting talk as something to be resented or 
whether to yield to her impulse to accept it congenially. 

“I’m going to see how my husband is,” she said, getting 
up. “He ought to do better out here in the air.” 

“May I escort you to your cabin?” he asked, getting 
up and offering his arm elaborately. 

“Thank you,” she murmured instinctively and, taking 


HORATIO’S STORY 


136 

his arm to spare him the embarrassment of having made 
an awkward gesture, they strolled into the cabin. 

“I should like to see more of you some time,” he said 
with hesitation and sincerity, and then added as a matter 
of pure form, “and I should like to meet your learned 
husband. Fm sure you are both too charming to keep 
always to yourselves.” 

Rhoda bowed and they parted. She felt dazed for a 
moment and as she entered the stateroom she found 
Flarey dressed and ready to go out. She kissed him 
warmly. 

“Hello,” he said, “I was just going out to look for 
you. Everything seems peaceful again and remarkably 
calm.” 

“I came to get you, but let's wait a minute.” 

“Why?” 

“I want that Mr. Gilman to get out of the way.” 

“And what's wrong with him, Rhoda ? I haven't 
spoken to him but he looks inoffensive enough.” 

“He is, Flarey, but Fve been talking to him and he 
just came in with me. I want him to get clear of the 
door.” 

When they did go out on deck, Gilman was not to be 
seen. Rhoda sat down with relief. 

“I am sorry I was childish about it,” said Rhoda. 

“About what?” 

“About meeting this Mr. Gilman.” 

“Oh, I didn't notice it.” 

“You see, I somehow never met people like him in that 
easy way before I married. I used always to hold them 
off, to refuse them an opening. To-day for the first time 
I felt that I was not impervious to other men. That was 
what took my breath away, Stupid, wasn't it?” 

“Let's cultivate him, Rhoda, if you like him. He may 
be worth knowing. It’s amazing how fast acting some 


I 


HORATIO’S STORY 137 

people are. He seems to have made a complete hit at 
once. ,, 

“I don’t understand it, Flarey. He has an ingenuous 
charm that I can’t combine with his polished sophistica¬ 
tion. Here he is now.” 

O’Flarity glanced up and saw Mr. Gilman approaching 
them. 

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Mr. Child,” he said. 
There was a vacant chair and he sat down with them. 
They talked intermittently, all three, for about an hour. 
The conversation turned to university life and how it 
differs from normal life, and Gilman chatted unaffectedly 
of the days he had spent at Cambridge, without, however, 
mentioning anything that gave a clue to what he was or 
had been, or why he chanced to be crossing the ocean. 
They were not far from their journey’s end and Rhoda 
experienced satisfaction in the fact that they were not 
likely to find themselves together again. Once again did 
she confront him alone on that trip. The meeting was so 
brief that she could not remember how they reached 
the subject so quickly, but she recalled that he seemed 
to be looking into her face searchingly. 

“But there are no such women in England,” he had 
said. 

This incident impressed Rhoda perhaps unduly. She 
would often catch herself recalling the details of it. She 
remembered, years afterwards, that his sympathy had an 
insinuating quality about it. She felt that she had drawn 
this quite incoherent character to her by the sheer force 
of her personality. He was older and more experienced 
than she, but she felt that she could have attracted him. 
O’Flarity had always possessed respect for her mind (and 
so had I, though she never believed it) but this man sug¬ 
gested, unlike any other she had met, that her personality 
held him in admiration. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


138 

Such an attraction was too strong and based upon too 
little in friendship or association for her to trust it. She 
had resisted efforts on his part to get some assurance that 
she would receive him in America, and he made no ad¬ 
vances to O’Flarity Child. To the latter, the whole affair 
seemed unsatisfactory. He was drawn to the man by 
the same charm he possessed for his wife, but knowing 
that Gilman took no real interest in him, he did nothing 
to prolong the acquaintance. He did think that Rhoda 
was excessively concerned about the flutter that he seemed 
to arouse. 

‘‘You're foolish/' he would say, “if you like him at all, 
not to invite him to see us if he happens to find himself 
near Boston." 

“There was a time," said Rhoda, “when I should have 
thought it necessary to see a thing like this through to the 
end, but I’m so perfectly happy as things are that I’m 
naturally glad to have him out of the way." 

“Funny," said O’Flarity, “I don’t quite get the idea." 

“No wonder, darling, it isn’t an idea." 

I had persuaded them to stop with me at Belmont while 
they decided what they were going to do. Wentworth 
was out of the way at the time. I had sent him to camp 
for a part of that summer. The discrepancy in our ages 
made our close companionship unfortunate for both of 
us, and particularly for him; and, while I disliked boys’ 
camps generally, I thought this one harmless and desirable 
for Wentworth, because it gave him an opportunity to 
associate with boys of his own age. This I thought par¬ 
ticularly advantageous in the playful mood of a summer 
vacation. 

It was during the first days of the war; all was excite¬ 
ment and distrust. I found a quiet place in Bretton 
Woods, N. H., where I managed to carry on, in my 
own way, quite undisturbed. Before leaving, however, I 


HORATIO’S STORY 


139 

had spent a good deal of time trying to get O’Flarity a 
permanent appointment at the university. It had been 
the custom with us, and there was no precedent to the 
contrary, to take on the staff any man returning from the 
Dunhill Memorial Fellowship. The university seemed to 
take back what it gave. While at first sight it seemed a 
little ungenerous. I always used my influence in favour 
of the custom, because I thought it altogether desirable 
to have lecturers with academic experience abroad and 
because it increased the value of the fellowship. It was 
not wholly prejudice, therefore, that made me fight for 
O’Flarity Child; I had done so for all the Dunhill bene¬ 
ficiaries. But it happened that we were overstocked with 
young tutors and instructors, not only in philosophy, but 
in other subjects as well, and I could not find any means 
to persuade the president to acquire him. We were short 
of funds, an appeal had to be made for money, and in 
the face of this appeal we had to present the appearance 
of abject poverty and dejection. 

When Rhoda and O’Flarity came I lost very little time 
in getting out of town. Likely enough that explained 
my month at Bretton Woods quite as much as the war. 
I knew they wanted to be alone. I had done what I 
could and there was nothing more for me to do, and I 
knew that a man of his recognized distinction would have 
no difficulty in establishing himself elsewhere. 

It was absorbing, however, to see them, if only for a 
day or so, and observe the changes that had occurred. 
Rhoda, of course, I thought more changed than O’Flarity. 
The boy is father of the man in a sense that seems to 
have no parallel in the life of a woman. When the first 
thrill of knowing that he had no need to treat himself 
as an invalid passed off, he readily sank back into his 
old habits. I never saw him use his body either vigor¬ 
ously or efficiently; he could never attain normal co- 


140 


HORATIO’S STORY 


ordination- in the simplest things. Though he tried, he 
could never learn to drive an automobile, and his use of 
his hands was so limited that he sometimes startled those 
who happened to be near him. “Should you mind open¬ 
ing this tin of tobacco for me?” he would ask, “I don't 
quite see how it works." 

Glad as I was to see them, I was equally glad to get 
away. The first crisis in their life together occurred while 
they were stopping at my home; it was one that brought 
their personalities into conflict for the first time seriously. 
O’Flarity Child had every reason to believe that he would 
be called to Arlington at the end of two or three years, 
specifically on the retirement of Professor Overman, who 
had let it be known that he had no intention of instruct¬ 
ing the youth of New England one day longer than need¬ 
ful to secure his pension. Now the president advised 
Child to take a vacant chair in a very obscure college in 
Michigan. He wanted him to have experience in lectur¬ 
ing, and thought that being a temporary professor of phi¬ 
losophy, in a school that boasted of a department of one 
in that subject, would offer more varied experience than 
being an assistant somewhere in the East. It would be 
hard for him to avoid the dangers of excessive specializa¬ 
tion at Arlington, and the president thought that this 
engagement would be a fine experience as a sort of philo¬ 
sophical internment. 

O’Flarity, who was anxious to digest and reconsider 
the fruits of his European study, and perhaps consider 
his first ventures in writing, inclined favourably to Presi¬ 
dent Moorhouse’s plan; and he felt that in following the 
president's advice he would strengthen his chances to join 
our staff. Rhoda, on the other hand, was strongly against 
it. She had married on a contract of equality, and, look¬ 
ing at the matter impersonally, she thought that her career 
was as important as his. There was no reason, surely, 


HORATIO’S STORY 141 

why his residence should be hers any more than her resi¬ 
dence his. 

While they were abroad she had written very little 
indeed. Besides a very few articles that appeared in the 
Tribune, five in all, she had nothing to show for her 
time except a manuscript of impressions, set down in the 
form of a journal, which, though it contained undoubtedly 
plausible literary material, possessed no market. But 
neither of them had worried about this. It was the season 
to take a little time off, to improve their leisure. Rhoda 
should have preferred O’Flarity not to plunge so deeply 
into his studies, but his sense of noblesse oblige demanded 
that the Dunhill Fellowship be pursued seriously, and his 
career had demanded the acceptance of the fellowship. 

Now, however, all this was changed. The honeymoon 
was over, and Rhoda felt that she had to justify herself 
by going earnestly and energetically to work. She had 
idled enough and she did not wish to spoil the joy of 
that great love by making it the price of her self-respect. 

And she felt that going west for three years might 
seriously damage her future. It would be hard enough 
to pull herself together. As it was almost everybody had 
forgotten her; people in journalistic offices move about 
restlessly and she could hardly hope to be remembered 
any longer. 

Neither of them suggested parting; they were too much 
in love for that. And once she was certain that O’Flarity 
thought it best to go, Rhoda did not try to keep him in 
Boston. After all, she thought but not without misgiv¬ 
ing, his was to be the great career and not hers. Though 
she was in most respects the stronger and well knew it, 
she knew equally well that her career had suffered too 
much already through her inability as a younger woman 
to give it direction. 

She felt that he needed her, and that he needed her in 


142 


HORATIO’S STORY 


a way in which he was incapable of helping her. The 
marriage of the strong and the weak may be powerful, 
but it excludes the refinement of nicely reciprocating re¬ 
lationships. Already she had been at work in trying to 
stimulate his arrested practicality, in teaching him to meet 
people effectively, and in urging him to formulate his 
plans for a career. And this had been difficult because 
from the first she had shrunk from the career of a uni¬ 
versity parasite, as she used to call them. It seemed to her 
no career at all, no reaching out into the world. But she 
noted with pleasure his progress in these things, and she 
regretted not a little that his hand could never reach over 
and help her with her career. The thought never occurred 
to him, and besides, he did not know anything of that side 
of life. His interests, she mused, were narrow after all, 
his grasp upon life insecure. He did not understand the 
real sources of his knowledge, for he had dealt with the 
symbols so long in acquiring his learning that he lost track 
of their purpose. He resembled an expert accountant who 
examines the books of any concern but who could not 
carry on a business. 

Rhoda yielded, and yielded gracefully, but she knew 
that she was making a sacrifice that could not be fully 
appreciated, and that offended her sense of justice. There 
are those who can yield and still keep on fighting. She 
went with him to Michigan planning to find some way of 
working out her problem. She hated the life and the 
people there; she knew that she would have to live in 
an unnatural retirement, but she planned to improve her 
idleness by working at something or other that would 
clarify her mind and enhance her ability to write. 

This she found difficult. “If I improve my style any 
more,” one of her letters said, “I shall never be able to 
sell another story. Don’t you know how you get to be 
literary when you set out to be clear?” I would answer, 


HORATIO’S STORY. 143 

“For God's sake use this opportunity to write something. 
Why not try a novel or something like that?" “No use, 
Lee, I can’t feel those big things inside of me. I cannot 
sustain any impulse. It’s only the little features that I’m 
crazy about.’’ 

And when the three years were over she had another 
blow. Just as the appointment to Arlington finally came 
and their plans were set, the United States declared war. 
O’Flarity, of course, could not restrain himself from go¬ 
ing at once. He did not think much about it; he did 
most of his thinking about the war after he was in the 
service; but he felt at once that it was his duty to go. 

Rhoda gave up her plan to return to journalism in the 
fall of 1917. She could not bear the thought of living 
alone in Boston or the suburbs while O’Flarity was in the 
service. I encouraged her to come on the theory that it 
was a good time to begin, or to recommence, in any occu¬ 
pation, and a good plan to keep busy while one’s husband 
was away; but my arguments availed little. She decided 
to put The Orchards at Chester in order, and live there 
for the duration of the war. This move seemed to me 
so irrational that I was glad when she invited me for a 
week or so in September. O’Flarity had just joined his 
regiment. 

“Why didn’t you bring Wentworth?’’ she asked the 
very first thing as I got off the train. 

“He’s not fit for visiting,’’ I said. “You can’t treat 
him as a child and you can’t treat him as a youth. He’s 
at the age now when he thinks it’s thoroughly disgraceful 
to have any emotion, especially toward women. He used 
to adore you, you know, but for the last few months it 
makes him ashamed when your name is mentioned.’’ 

“He’ll get over it. I’m glad of one thing, and that is 
that he’s too young and you’re too old for this war.’’ 

I could find no answer for this, and we said very 


144 


HORATIO'S STORY. 


little that I recall until, after dinner, we went out on 
the porch. It was a beautiful autumnal evening with the 
moon shining through a smoky mist. I observed that 
some building had been going on and that the yard seemed 
to be in disorder. 

“You know, Rhoda, ,, I said, “you’re always changing 
something. You’re never satisfied to let things be. I’ve 
not been here since the death of Uncle Tad, when you 
were not busy digging or building, antiquing or modern¬ 
izing. The old man had a lovely way of letting things 
rot naturally. It was a sort of dignified rotting, you 
know.” 

“You’re travelling on dangerous ground,” she said. 

“You don’t ask me to tread lightly? Not you, surely.” 

“No, I don’t. I’ll tell you, Lee.” 

“Please do.” 

“Well, I don’t know whether I should or not. I don’t 
know whether it’s fair to O’Flarity.” 

“Tell me,” I said slowly, “what is fair to O’Flarity and 
leave out the rest.” 

“It isn’t his fault. He meant well. It isn’t his fault 
anyway. I guess the war is what’s wrong. I feel just 
terribly; it’s years since I’ve felt so out of sorts. Do you 
know what I’m doing to this place ? I’m turning it into a 
farm that pays, that produces, and I’m going to run it 
myself for the duration of the war.” 

“Gracious!” 

“You think it funny?” 

“No, not a bit, but I haven’t got accustomed to the idea 
yet. It’s rather a sudden change, Rhoda.” 

“Yes, it is. I feel simply miserable; everything that 
I counted on has gone down to the ground, or at least the 
two things that I counted on most have failed me. I’m 
worse off in my profession than I ever was, and O’Flarity 
is gone.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


145 

There were tears in her eyes. I took her hand and 
foolishly tried to comfort her. 

“Rhoda, you’re not in the mood for me to tell you that 
O’Flarity is all that matters. But for the moment I think 
it true, and I think that his chances for a speedy and 
healthy return are really very good. It’s just inconceivable 
that this thing will go on much longer.” 

“I know that for the duration of the war O’Flarity is all 
that matters. You may be very sure that my love for him 
is strong enough to carry me through the war. Never¬ 
theless, powerful as my love is, it isn’t sufficient to keep 
me from feeling that my life is a wreck. I can’t see any¬ 
thing ahead. First I left in 1912, when I should have 
stayed, but I was in love and I knew that O’Flarity would 
take the Dunhill. Then in 1914 I went west against my 
better judgment. Now, just as I was going back to Bos¬ 
ton, the war is on and O’Flarity is called away. . . . Lee, 
you will pardon my emotion, won’t you ?” 

“Why don’t you go to Boston now ? It might be a good 
time to get a footing. A good many newspaper men will 
be out.” 

“Lee, I haven’t the heart to do it. I sometimes think 
that I should do it, but I just can’t. My emotion is too 
great. With O’Flarity away in the service I couldn’t see 
myself taking up the war work that is being doled out to 
women. Can you fancy me selling bonds or collecting 
money, or throwing myself into people’s private affairs in 
the dubious name of social service? Lee, the one thing for 
me to do in this war, is to make this sterile farm of mine 
produce. It’s good, healthy work, and nothing is more 
essential. I can pick up some of the physically unfit to 
work for me, and a year from now, I assure you, there 

will be a harvest.” 

“Rhoda, it’s incredibly officious for me to try to cheer 


HORATIO’S STORY 


146 

you while O’Flarity is away, but I really think your situa¬ 
tion is comparatively easy.” 

‘‘If only men could understand. You, who have had 
every opportunity to know me, you, Lee Seebohm, can sit 
there and talk to me like that! Lee, when O’Flarity came 
into my life, I tried to help him in every way to fulfil his 
destiny—big or little, whatever it was. No sacrifice was 
too great or too small. I did help him; he’s a bigger man 
to-day as he goes overseas to be shot than he ever was. 
He understands himself; he understands people; he under¬ 
stands his career and what he has before him. But 
O’Flarity couldn’t do that for me; he couldn’t help me to 
realize the best that is in me. My soul seemed to satisfy 
him just as it was. He couldn’t see the need to keep me 
forging ahead. And the result is that this war caught us 
at just the wrong point. War means the survival of the 
unfit; Flarey goes and I remain. 

“Lee, it isn’t only that I’ve lost confidence in my pro¬ 
fession and lost my husband. I’ve lost confidence in myself 
and don’t know where to turn.” 


CHAPTER IX 


The minute, almost, that the armistice was signed, 
Rhoda let the contracts for the building of her new home. 
She had intended the house as a surprise for Flarey, think¬ 
ing that the building would take no longer than it would 
take him to return from France. A year previous she had 
purchased ground in Belmont, and she had been in consul¬ 
tation with an architect ever since. The plans having 
been agreed upon finally, she waited only for the end of 
the war to start building, and their home was to be finished 
late that spring. The surprise of it, however, lost some 
of its climax, for the armistice found Flarey at Camp Dix, 
New Jersey. Late in December he came home an adoring 
and adorable husband for the Christmas holidays. 

They went south almost immediately and remained 
there until the University, which had been paying his 
salary and advancing him in scholastic honours with a 
great showing of patriotism during his service, beckoned 
him to return from Palm Beach to relieve Professor Akin- 
side, who had deferred his sabbatical meanderings until the 
termination of European hostilities. 

The building was not ready until May, and I presented 
myself at a rather scantily attended house-warming on the 
fifteenth. Never after that did I think that Rhoda’s effort 
to express herself adequately had been altogether in vain. 
In some respects the house was the architectural realization 
of her fondest dreams, the picture of what she expected 
the rest of her life to be. 

It was not a very large house. Externally it resembled 
many another. The general form was colonial, but much 
of the trimming, and the colour and sprightliness of the 

147 


HORATIO'S STORY 


148 

landscaping, prevented it from achieving the cold, chaste 
restraint of the eighteenth century style. The detail was of 
course in perfect keeping, but there was too much of it. 
It looked as though someone had taken a fine old Colonial 
house and poured icing over it. 

Rhoda had given more attention to the interior. The 
house, which was nearly square, was divided in two, front 
and back. The front was all one room with a high ceiling; 
the back had a kitchen in the middle and two offices, alike 
in every respect, in each corner. I don’t recall ever having 
been upstairs, but there was a delightful sleeping porch 
for Flarey, who was still alleged to have delicate health. 

The furnishings in the living room were completed in 
the interests of colour rather than form. Probably because 
Rhoda selected in the spring and thought of the summer, 
there was a great deal of wicker with bright, chintz cur¬ 
tains. The hangings were red and gold, and the light 
coming from three sides permitted no shadows. Her 
piano, and the rest of the furniture she had placed in her 
Boston apartment, came out of storage at last, but these 
pieces always seemed to me startled at finding themselves 
in Belmont. It is hard for me to describe precisely what 
the vivid colours were that marked the upholstering and 
other things, not because they lacked intensity, but because 
there were so many of them that in the large room they 
neutralized one another. What I do recall are the wicker 
chairs with their friendly footstools, the piano with its 
Indian shawl, a vigorous picture that Aberdean Duke gave 
for a wedding present, all very pleasant and momentarily 
stimulating but robbing each other of any right to a per¬ 
manent remembrance. If one must be impressionistic, one 
should be economical about it. 

Her architect had done a good deal of complaining 
about her layout, especially in the limited and slighted 
kitchen and servant quarters. He had a hard time per- 


HORATIO’S STORY 


149 


suading her not to build a fairly large house with merely 
a kitchenette, and no maid’s room whatever. Her lawyer, 
my respected brother Hallam, could not contain himself 
with contempt for a woman who insisted upon building 
while prices were abnormally high, but Rhoda opposed him 
more valiantly and more effectively than the architect, who 
had at least achieved a compromise here and there. She 
told my brother that rents were high, too, and that she 
might as well spend a good deal more and have something 
to show for her money when prices became normal again. 

Something to show she certainly did acquire; a two- 
family house could not have been more completely dual- 
istic, It was made for two people having utterly different 
interests and preparing to preserve the utmost personal 
privacy. 

For both of them it was a first experience at establishing 
a home in any permanent sense. Abroad their mood as 
well as their residence was one of a temporary nature, and 
in Michigan, although they lived there for almost three 
years, they never thought of their quarters as anything 
more than a momentary expedient. It was therefore with 
great hope and delight that Rhoda made her plans and 
carried them out with O’Flarity Child. His library and 
her few books were collected with emotion and put in their 
separate offices. There was the purchasing of rugs and 
pictures, the selection of a thousand little things. 

Their joy, however, was mingled with sadness. They 
felt, Flarey more than Rhoda, that these errands should 
have been done seven years ago. 

O’Flarity acted as though the whole thing particularly 
bored him. “I shall certainly never move again. After 
the trouble of getting really established is over, you won’t 
be able to budge me. I once had the ambition to go to 
one of the big universities, now I’m satisfied to teach at 
Arlington until I die.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


150 

He was not a man to take much interest in physical life. 
Even his library gave him no pleasure either of possession 
or creation. He would always throw his books away and 
begin all over again. He read extensively and continually 
and with such rapidity that he needed to use a reference 
library always. What was the use in trying to compete 
with the great university libraries anyway? 

Rhoda, on the other hand, though she missed domestic 
competence by no narrow margin, attached herself to her 
possessions, to books and furniture, to porcelain and pic¬ 
tures. Once a book or work of art fully impressed her, 
she did not like to part with it. She liked to put it in a 
place where it reflected the part that it played in her life. 
Although I sometimes thought Rhoda’s taste a caution in 
the proverbial sense, nevertheless I liked this about it, that 
it was never accidental and that it always accomplished 
what it set out to do, whether or not it lacked form or 
dignity. 

O’Flarity at first would complain bitterly about her 
arbitrary way of decorating but, when it came to an argu¬ 
ment, it usually turned out that he had been shocked by a 
lack of convention in something or other and had no better 
solution of the problem to offer. Rhoda had little patience 
for this timidity. O’Flarity was incapable of fear in the 
things nearest his heart, so why should he object to her 
bold solutions of practical problems? She called this 
period of their lives the matrimonial reconstruction, which 
I thought something of a mistake because it called undue 
attention to a break in the continuity of their lives. It 
brought into prominence facts that they might have over¬ 
looked in the hope that time would soften them. 

For the war had a formative influence, it seemed to me, 
upon the characters of most people. It sharpened their 
characteristics; it made them more definitely of one colour 
or another. Even Wentworth was touched by it. He was 


HORATIO’S STORY 


151 

eighteen the year of the armistice and he had probably 
never read a newspaper while the world was at peace. He 
began carrying himself as he thought a soldier should, 
and he would imitate minor forms of military manners as 
though he thought a soldier the only possible thing for a 
young gentleman to be, which indeed it was during the only 
portion of his life that he consciously looked forward to 
being a young gentleman. It became extremely difficult 
to teach him history; he thought quite naturally that the 
only function of a state was to carry on war successfully, 
and his notions of politics were so limited that it took a 
year or two of peace before I could find the courage to 
start in all over again at the beginning. He would swell 
his chest, and observe the military qualities of other young 
boys; he would ask again and again how old he would 
have to be before I should let him go. But, after all, his 
playing soldiers and sticking pins in maps did very little 
real harm, and perhaps six months after the armistice he 
worried me by his rounding shoulders and his tendency 
to be overly studious for a boy of his age. 

With O’Flarity Child, however, the effect was deep and 
lasting. At first it seemed to me that he made a great deal 
of his uniform when the war was over. People began 
asking him when he was going back to mufties. Then it 
appeared that a change of raiment didn’t help him any. 
Rhoda had started him on the way toward getting on with 
people; the army added to that a little skill in commanding 
them. I went to his first lecture at Arlington hoping to 
hear some philosophical study that was the result of a great 
deal of reflection and enforced idleness. He marched up 
to the lecture table in full uniform with his boots shining 
and gave, in very clear and simple words, a lecture the 
substance of which could hardly have been avoided by any¬ 
one who had given the subject the slightest consideration. 
I had thought that this was accidental, but, coming back a 


HORATIO’S STORY 


152 

few months later, I found that the parade-ground method 
of his original delivery stuck to him. He addressed his 
students as though they were incapable of understanding 
anything that he did not explain. 

“Why don’t you give them something for their time?” 
I asked him at the close. 

“What do you mean, Lee ?” he asked indignantly. 

“You lecture as though you thought you had a lot of 
children before you. You haven’t given them anything 
they can’t find in any one of half a dozen books; and 
they’re supposed to be familiar with all of them.” 

“They are a lot of children, aren’t they ?” 

“You certainly can’t expect them to grow up unless 
somebody weans them, Flarey.” 

“You’re an idealist, you educate so vigorously that there 
are hardly more than a dozen men in the course of the year 
who dare sign up with you. Now my style is not inflexible, 
I go just as far as I can carry a reasonable majority of the 
students with me. When the atmosphere of the war is 
dispersed, I shall stop talking like a drill sergeant and try 
to be in sympathy with the new atmosphere, whatever it is. 
But my books aren’t that way.” 

Nor were they. Two books of his were already pub¬ 
lished: The Foundations of the Modern Movement in 
Philosophy and The Feud with Psychology, and I think 
these two books best realize his genius and delineate 
his limitations. In no sense creative, and constructive only 
in so far as they contribute to historical knowledge, each is 
a fine study of its problem and a lucid piece of writing. 
Though they were in most respects brilliant, they fell down 
lamentably in their inability to free themselves from the 
actual labour of research. They were overwrought with 
footnotes; they were snowed in with allusions and bibli¬ 
ography. O’Flarity had read exceptionally widely, and he 
was unable to leave out the smallest bibliographic detail. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


153 

He was incapable of forgetting anything. It was a task, 
and perhaps not a gratuitous one, to read either of these 
books; they were more than stimulating in an historical 
way but, when you set them down at last, there was 
nothing left for reflection. What of it? you would ask 
yourself at every showing of unexpected learning. He 
seemed to me an exalted example of the futility of much 
in our educational system. 

And yet he was far from futile, sterile though his mind 
might be. He was everywhere talking, lecturing, and 
being made much of. While he had formerly receded 
from society he now went out to conquer whenever an 
opportunity presented itself. In the war he had ceased 
from being a student; he had been a man among men, and 
as such he had won his promotions. The war had strength¬ 
ened the practicality and the will to ambition that Rhoda 
had been urging upon him, and he took hold of his career 
as though it were a political campaign. 

As for Rhoda’s transformation due to the war, it 
brought out sharply the fact that she was by nature an 
irreconcilable. From her farm at Chester she came back 
less willing than ever to compromise on the smallest point, 
more inclined than ever to refer everything to herself. 
She recommenced, in a small way, her old journalistic 
work, and she felt more keenly than since she married, 
that there was something, she knew not what, radically 
wrong with her life. It fairly haunted her mind. She had 
done her share of war work, but she knew that only living 
alone on the farm had made it possible. She despised the 
reactions of people to the war. It put individuals in 
groups; men became one with men in whose principles 
they had no belief. And she despised these groups, the 
camps of radicals, pacifists, chauvinists, and pro-capitalists. 
She went gingerly about from office to office with her 


154 


HORATIO'S STORY 


new work, being told that this was untimely and that 
antagonizing. 

Hers was a personality that wavered between the 
excesses of optimism and pessimism, and more than any¬ 
one I knew did she reflect what seemed to me the most 
accurate reaction of a certain type of mind to the war. 
In the beginning she was so optimistic, so willing to sacri¬ 
fice: in the end nothing was left but heartbreak and the 
bitterness of a vain question—what was it all given for, 
anyway ? 

But, although she seemed utterly given over to dis¬ 
couragement, with her new house and her husband back 
from military duty she threw the last of her youth into an 
effort to rehabilitate herself. She was then only thirty-five 
and seemed to be at the height of her powers. She was 
more beautiful than she had ever been; her marriage had 
given her face more responsiveness; it had deepened her 
eyes and softened her mouth. 

Wentworth had almost forgotten how warmly as a child 
he had loved Rhoda and how tenderly she had taken care 
of him. They began to be great chums; they rode together 
and played tennis and golf. Frequently I would find 
Rhoda and Went enjoying their leisure either in my library 
or in hers. My son had suddenly overcome most of the 
feeling of shame that he possessed a few years previous 
with regard to women. I found him dressing with minute 
care, and trying to be chivalrous in small ways. It was 
only a phase but it amounted to foppishness while it lasted. 
After a few futile and painfully embarrassing attempts, 
he finally produced a pair of sideboards that made people 
call him Pendennis, and it took a great effort on my part 
to treat these romantic objects as seriously as they were 
intended. 

Wentworth was actually a freshman at Harvard that 
year and I had him take rooms in Cambridge as a matter 


HORATIO'S STORY 


iS 5 

of course. But some time before he came home for the 
Christmas recess he told me that he thought that he would 
not reside in Cambridge during his sophomore and junior 
years, though he would doubtless go back to the Yard as 
a senior. The week-ends in Belmont I thought so pro¬ 
longed that he must have found life dull in Cambridge. 
His plan to return for two years having originated without 
any suggestion from me, and having fundamentally no 
other reason than the desire to study in the quiet of my 
library, I did not argue with him but made arrangements 
to have him come back home. 

It may seem absurd that it was necessary to make 
arrangements, but I found that he was beginning to have 
a personality that needed recognition in a physical and 
material way. The idea that there can be no house large 
enough for two heads of families had been demonstrated 
false by Rhoda, and I was to some extent the victim of her 
healthy contagion. Went must feel at home. Then almost 
nineteen, he would be under my roof at most five years 
longer, at the end of which I shall doubtless thrust him 
out whether he wishes to go or not. For I cannot believe 
that it is good for youth to live with age too long. It is not 
wholly a matter of years. It is one of income, of morals, 
of manners. But during the time that I thought it desir¬ 
able for him to use my home as his own, I wanted him to 
learn how to live, so that when the time came for him to set 
up alone he could do so. I, therefore, in the fall of 1919 
as he began his sophomore studies, gave up my library and 
music room to serve him as much as me, and fitted out an 
office upstairs—just a little room with a table and chair— 
for my own use temporarily. 

One warm April day the following spring I chanced to 
look out of the window of this room and saw Rhoda and 
Wentworth approaching the house, and as they were 
carrying golf bags for the first time that season, my glance 


HORATIO'S STORY 


156 

lingered for a moment to accustom myself to the idea. 
A few minutes later Jenkins announced tea and I asked 
him to serve me alone where I was. It had seemed to me 
as I glanced out of the window that Wentworth was at an 
age when a third party would be hard for him to manage, 
and that he had need to learn to entertain without my 
assistance. 

They did not wholly agree with me, however, and 
presently Rhoda came upstairs, Wentworth having excused 
himself to change for dinner. I was glad to see her and 
she knew it. 

“Why didn’t you come down and have tea with us, you 
old muddle-head?” 

I explained my reasons truthfully. 

“Well, you are certainly an extraordinary parent 1 ” 

“Perhaps so,” I said, and we went down together. 

“Should you like to walk over with me, Lee ?” 

“Let’s.” 

It was green and beautifully warm. We stopped now 
and then to pick a flower or two. 

“You know, Lee, it’s hard not to be hopeful in the 
spring.” 

“When you are as old as I, my dear, you are not easily 
moved by anything, and almost never by nature.” 

“You have no need to be moved. I confess I was think¬ 
ing only of myself. You know I sometimes think you 
were right in urging me to drop journalism and take up 
serious writing on my own account. I may have wanted 
to all along, but haven’t ever had the courage to do it. 
A little practical success, a little going into print now and 
then is enough to sustain me.” 

“How are things going now?” 

“Picking up. There’s something awfully stimulating 
about it, but the ups and downs of it are very unsatisfac¬ 
tory at my age. Do you know what I’m thinking of doing 


HORATIO’S STORY. 157 

now? I’m trying to work my way into a job as literary 
editor. There are going to be a lot of changes in the 
Tribune, and I’m planning to storm the place/’ 

“I’d love to see you handling the book section, Rhoda. 
It’s of all things the job on a newspaper that I think you 
most suited for, not actually perhaps as much as poten¬ 
tially, if you know what I mean.” 

“Exactly, but as much as the other fellow probably, and 
once you got the idea that your future lay in it, you would 
soon hump your back and get down to work. 

“Let’s hurry a little, Lee, O’Flarity may have students 
this afternoon and he’d like us to meet them.” 

We quickened our pace. 

“Yes, Lee, I’m not mentioning it to anybody but I’m 
trying awfully hard for this book review business. Here 
I am near Arlington, not far from Harvard, and in a 
society of university people. I ought to be able to raise 
the general level of the thing by handing out the work 
judiciously. I’m thinking of our new house as the centre 
of a new circle. I suppose every wife does that. I want 
O’Flarity to be surrounded with altogether delightful 
people.” 

“What does he think about it?” 

“He doesn’t think about it at all yet. He has a regular 
afternoon when the students in his courses come and now 
and then he has friends in Boston, but we’re going to do 
things a bit more vigorously presently. I must hurry and 
get a cook so that we can have people to dinner.” 

We were soon at the door. On going in we found 
O’Flarity seated in an easy chair with half a dozen students 
grouped about the room. He looked his old self for a 
moment except that he held a pipe in his hand and his 
eyebrows knit together with a determination that I thought 
a new characteristic of his. We were introduced. Rhoda 
in sport clothes looked so foreign to the gathering that 


158 HORATIO'S STORY 

one of the more sober-minded youths looked at his watch. 

“We were having an old discussion, Mr. Seebohm, on 
the subject of education,” said Flarey as we entered. 

“Keep right on,” I said. “I’m glad to listen.” 

“Well,” said O’Flarity, “I was in the midst of answering 
Mr. Jeffries who had asked whether it was not wiser to 
throw out everything we have in the way of classical 
learning, and start boys and girls from the beginning of 
knowledge, instead of trying to give them the training, 
the knowledge, and the wisdom of their fathers as some¬ 
thing to start with.” 

“I think that’s a better statement of my question,” said 
Jeffries with a smile, “than my own wording of it.” 

“This all grew out of the question as to whether or not 
Latin and Greek can be dispensed with,” said a pretty 
young girl, for my special benefit. I bowed my thanks. 

“And my answer was something like this,” Flarey went 
on. “I don’t think you can throw out everything of the 
past even if it were desirable to do so, which I don’t believe 
for a moment.” 

Rhoda had just finished lighting a cigarette and, putting 
her matches carefully on the mantel-shelf, she swung 
round; she put her hands deep into the generous sockets 
of her tweed skirt and said very rapidly indeed: 

“I don’t think there’s any question as to its being desir¬ 
able to scrap everything and start fresh. I don’t see any 
reason why we should have to spend most of our lives 
fighting against the traditional foolishness of our fathers 
and mothers.” 

“That’s it!” cried Jeffries, slapping his knee vehemently. 
O’Flarity took his wife’s statement as if it had been made 
by one of the students, which threw Rhoda further left in 
the opposition. It was difficult for me to see how O’Flarity 
could have received it otherwise, for it struck him right in 
the face. His control I thought perfect. Rhoda, appar- 


HORATIO’S STORY, 159 

ently, had no conception of the possible sentiments that 
arose. O’Flarity had been talking to his students in a 
pleasantly argumentative way, and his wife, coming into 
the room unexpectedly, had joined the opposition as a 
matter of course and fairly vigorously. 

“Weir’—he had a way of picking himself up with that 
word—“it may be that there is an evolution of the mind 
as well as the physical side of the race. Physically, we're 
helpless at birth; so are we mentally. And mental ma Par¬ 
ity comes after a much longer period of nursing. That’s 
stating it in too general terms, but I think you get some 
impression, without my insisting upon an analogy, of the 
hopelessness of man trying to get an education of any kind 
without a consideration of what comes before.” 

“But it isn’t exactly the nursing part of it that we mean, 
is it, Mr. Jeffries? What we’re worried about is that even 
in our adult education, we keep on looking into the past 
when we ought to be looking into ourselves, or working 
with facts in the laboratories. That’s why we’re unpro¬ 
ductive.” She spoke to no better purpose the second time. 
O’Flarity had realized the fallacy of his nursing idea as 
soon as it got out of his mouth. 

“Never mind the matter of production, Mrs. Child,” 
I ventured, taking the role of peacemaker. “Education 
should be a preparation for production.” 

“No, one learns to produce by producing,” said the 
pretty girl. 

“Quite so, if you please, but that merely means, in this 
argument, that producing can be regarded as an experi¬ 
ence. And the experience, not the production as such, 
educates. And, as I was saying, I don’t see how people 
can get very far without a good grasp of common knowl¬ 
edge and without something in the way of disciplinary 
training. Now one way to get both together is by going 
in for the classics.” 


i6o 


HORATIO’S STORY 


“I think Td better be going over toward Arlington,” 
said one of the students, and the individualism of the new 
generation to the contrary notwithstanding, they all scam¬ 
pered out presently. 

“I say, Rhoda,” said O’Flarity when they had gone, 
“you rather turned things into a free-for-all!” 

“I didn’t mean to do it, darling,” said Rhoda, kissing 
him. “I’ll never do it again.” 

“And your ideas about education are a little naive. 
They need to be toned down; they need further con¬ 
sideration.” 

“That’s true, Flarey, but I’ve taught as much as you 
have, and I like to say things straight out.” 

“Won’t you have supper with us, Lee?” 

“I should be delighted, but Rhoda tells me you have no 
cook. Suppose you come over and dine with us.” 

“Thanks, no. I’ve seen enough of youth for one day, 
with all due respect to your son.” 

“He’s really very well trained, Flarey; he wouldn’t 
bother you,” said Rhoda. 

“Well, let’s go to town, the three of us, if we have no 
supper here.” 

We were shortly all three crowded into the front and 
only seats in Rhoda’s old speedster, once so smart, now 
in a state of noisy disintegration. 

“I’ll not go by the university in this rig,” she said, and 
O’Flarity replied significantly: “I’m glad you have some 
respect for our alleged dignity.” After a spin through the 
country we ran into Boston and stopped at the Copley- 
Plaza. We were all in a better humour; I had almost for¬ 
gotten that I had been present at a family tilt. 

“Darling,” said Rhoda, after we had ordered, “you 
haven’t asked me what I did to-day.” 

“That’s quite true. Well, what did you do? Did you 
get a cook?” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


161 


“No.” 

“Did you get a butler ?” 

“We can’t afford one.” 

“Did you get a maid ?” 

“No.” 

“Did you see that impossible plumber?” 

“No, again.” 

“Well, you must have been out at St. Louis seeing your 
mother-in-law.” 

“I’m not sure but I think I’ve been getting a regular 
job.” 

“Well, I’ll be damned ! Congratulations!” 

“What have you been doing to-day ?” 

“Well, I delivered a lecture, prepared two, did some 
work on my book, entertained the kids in the afternoon.” 

“Didn’t you remember to see the plumber even?” 

“Why, no.” 

“Nor see about cooks?” 

“No.” 

“Well, it looks as if neither of us accepted the duties of 
home life quite seriously.” 

“Lee, how have you managed to come through without 
a secretary?” Flarey continued as the waiter brought our 
soup. 

“I never needed one.” 

“That’s incredible.” 

“Why on earth should I have a secretary ?” 

“You can’t afford to do without one, Lee.” 

I turned to the soup with pleasure. O’Flarity Child 
went on. 

“A man can’t get the most out of himself without one, 
Lee. And if I don’t get one I simply won’t be able to 
handle the work. My notes have to be typed and filed; 
my correspondence has to be answered deftly; my lectures 


HORATIO'S STORY 


162 

have to be taken down during the lecture and typed up for 
me so that I can see whether they’re worth printing.” 

“Your secretary is going to be a busy woman,” I said. 

“He should have one secretary, one typist, one door man, 
and two or three assistants in research!” said Rhoda. 

“No, I’ll make my own searches. I don’t need any help 
there.” 

That was true. O’Flarity Child, whatever his weak¬ 
nesses, was remarkable in research—so remarkable, in 
fact, that he never looked up his problem. He would write 
down his solution, whether historical or otherwise, and 
look up his footnotes merely to make sure of his correct¬ 
ness. With a few possible exceptions, he never forgot a 
fact he had read in a book, nor remembered anything he 
acquired elsewhere. 

“Do you think it would be an affectation, Lee, if I took 
on a secretary? In other departments they have assist¬ 
ants; I couldn’t use an assistant, but a secretary would 
make a big difference to me. It would certainly increase 
my production.” 

“I don’t think it would be an affectation, Flarey, but 
I think it would be a mistake to increase your production.” 

“You’ve never needed one?” 

“Never.” 

“But then you haven’t plunged into the world the way 
I’m going to. You’ve limited your career. Don’t you 
admit that, Lee ?” 

“I’ve never given the matter of a career a thought.” 
I noticed that Rhoda had said nothing for some time; her 
brow seemed to me clouded and growing more and more 
threatening; I dreaded another domestic scene. I was 
wondering if Rhoda’s spirits had not gone down because 
neither of us had expressed much interest in what she had 
been doing. 

“Rhoda,” I said, “when you are conducting a book sec- 


HORATIO’S STORY 163 

tion, you’ll be the only one of the three of us to have a 
real job.” 

“Is this something new, Rhoda?” Flarey asked. 

“No, it’s only a wild idea of mine.” 

“Oh!” 

“I think it’s a very good idea,” I said. 

“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said Flarey. 

Whether it was or not I never knew, but I always 
doubted it. Rhoda lately acquired the habit of typing little 
bulletins about herself and leaving them upon his desk. 
Then he would remember. And I soon acquired the habit 
of never trying to say the tactful thing when a husband 
and wife needed the tact to arise at home rather than 
abroad. O’Flarity’s remark made Rhoda all the more 
uncomfortable. We pursued the question of secretaries 
again to my displeasure, because I did not want to speak 
my mind freely on the subject before Rhoda. I could see 
that I was going to break flatly with my former pride and 
joy on the subject of trying to mingle a university career 
and a public one; and I knew that he was beginning to 
hold against me the fact that I had not somehow got into 
the world as a public character. These things I preferred 
not to discuss with him in Rhoda’s presence, for my frank¬ 
ness occasionally hurt people’s feelings. To cut short 
I began looking about the room. 

“That solitary diner there in the corner is my notion of 
a fine looking fellow,” I said. 

“Isn’t he!” said O’Flarity. 

“You know him?” asked Rhoda. 

“No.” 

“We do.” 

“We?” said O’Flarity. 

“Don’t you know, Flarey? Think!” 

“He’s vaguely familiar, but I don’t remember seeing him 
lately.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


164 

“His name is Gilman. We met him on the steamer/ 5 

“So we did. I remember. Now what’s he doing in 
America again?” 

“I never knew what he was doing here the first time. 
You remember my telling you of him, don’t you, Lee?” 

“Yes, I do, but I’ve never been able to associate your 
story of him with an impression of a real person. I’m 
awfully glad to see him.” 

Not a great deal of him could be observed. He was 
dividing his attention between his dessert and a sporting 
sheet that obstructed my view. Presently the waiter gave 
him his change and he gathered up his paper. There were 
two doors by which he could have left the grill room, and 
he deliberately chose the one that brought him near our 
table. Evidently he had seen us first. As he approached, 
both Rhoda and O’Flarity looked up expectantly. 

“Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Child,” he said, bowing. O’Flarity 
and I got up; they shook hands and I was introduced. 

“Sit down and have dessert with us,” O’Flarity urged 
cordially. 

“I couldn’t have dessert, but I should love to sit down.” 

“Have another cup of coffee anyway,” said Rhoda. 

“It’s perfectly ripping to meet you after all these years, 
and neither of you changed a bit.” 

“Not really,” said Rhoda, mocking his accent playfully. 

“To be perfectly candid, while I recognized you at once, 
I have not a precise enough memory to tell you exactly 
how you have changed. For one thing you’re wearing a 
different gown, but Mr. Child, from all you can judge by 
sight, has exactly the same togs.” 

Gilman was correct in his observation. O’Flarity some¬ 
times got new, but he never changed his style. 

“You look about the same yourself,” said O’Flarity. 

“I’m afraid I’m past the age when one changes without 
an apology. But tell me, Mrs. Child, how have you got on 


HORATIO’S STORY 165 

in journalism? Don’t you remember, the one thing you 
told me about was your big scheme? Have your plans 
materialized? I’m so interested.” 

Rhoda’s face beamed with pleasure. “It’s a long story,” 
she said, “and it’s not altogether a happy one, but I’ll tell 
you about it some time.” 

“I wish you would,” he said simply. 

“Are you staying long in Boston?” asked O’Flarity. 

“Only a month or so, I’m sorry to say.” 

“Well, please come and see us,” urged Rhoda. 

“I should be delighted.” 

The conversation turned to other things, and we finished 
our dinner and parted with Gilman in the lobby. 

“Have you ever been in Belmont ?” 

“Yes, indeed. I’m terribly fond of it.” 

“Well, then, we’ll expect you a week from Friday.” 

As we got into the machine O’Flarity said: 

“Perhaps that will stimulate our heroic effort to find 
a cook.” 

“Our effort, darling, did you say?” 


CHAPTER X 


Rhoda was genial enough to invite me to dine with Mr. 
Gilman, but it fell out that I met him again before that 
occasion, in fact, the morning after I had been presented 
to him at the Copley-Plaza. He attended one of my 
Arlington lectures, how and why I never knew, as it is 
altogether without precedent for a stranger to venture 
in upon one of my lectures without invitation. The day 
being very fine there were I think only five or six others, 
and at the close I observed Gilman coming toward me, 
apparently to explain away his eccentric intrusion. I 
lingered enough for him to catch me. 

“It was awfully jolly to listen in on this, Mr. Seebohm,” 
he said. “Ever since I read your book on psycho-physics 
Pve had a sneaking ambition to hear you lecture.” 

“I’m glad you liked it,” I said. “Are you walking 
toward Massachusetts Avenue?” 

“Yes, I am.” 

“Then we can go together.” There was much in the 
man I could not account for and he aroused my curiosity. 

“How did you happen to pick up my paper ?” I asked. 

“Mrs. Child told me about it five years ago.” 

“You’re an Oxonian?” 

“No, Cambridge.” 

“Then perhaps you knew my friend Bottomley who 
lectured in Anglo-Saxon Philology.” 

“After my time, I believe.” His brows knitted together 
and he smiled attractively. Gilman’s age was not easy for 
me to guess. I had thought him younger than I, who was 
forty-four at the time, but if he preceded Bottomley at 
Cambridge he must surely have been the elder. I won- 

166 


HORATIO'S STORY 


167 

dered if it were not possible for an English boy to go 
through Cambridge without knowing of my friend’s exist¬ 
ence, as many, no doubt, go through Arlington without 
ever hearing of me. 

“But I thought Bottomley was pretty well known.” 

“Not in the late eighties,” said Gilman. 

“No,” I said, astonished. “Not in the eighties I” We 
had reached the point where each went his own way; I was 
wondering as we shook hands whether I should invite him 
to try some more of my lectures, but we parted before 
I reached a satisfactory conclusion. 

Gilman was well built and amazingly youthful for his 
age, that could not have been a day under fifty. There was 
an athletic gesture in the way he handled his body; but 
there was no swagger about it; the ease of his carriage 
struck you. We Americans have a characteristic of 
being athletic about this or that particular sport, and when 
not engaged in its pursuit our bodies lose all expression 
of the physical pleasure of well-being. Englishmen, how¬ 
ever, seem to me to carry their sportsmanship, if they have 
any, into all the little nooks and crannies of their lives. 
Gilman was pleasantly graceful in a way that suggested 
refinement both of body and mind. 

His smile, the frequent knitting of his brows, and the 
play of little wrinkles about his grayish eyes, were sympa¬ 
thetic without intrusion, friendly and intimate without 
familiarity. 

As I drove myself out to Belmont I reflected that I had 
rarely met a man who attracted me more. What instantly 
drew me to him was the simple faith that a fine quality 
of friendship, not at once definable, was possible between 
us. If we had met years ago, I thought, it might have made 
some difference in our lives. But by the time I reached 
home I was asking myself whether, after all, it was too 
late. 


HORATIO'S STORY 


168 

And yet for some reason or other I could not suppress 
a wave of feeling against him. Rhoda’s story of their 
meeting returned to my mind with the vividness of every¬ 
thing associated with that woman. So it was she who had 
told him about my obscure labours! I had not known that 
I had figured in their conversations. My hostility was 
probably due to a mild jealousy of an afifair of old standing, 
and I thought myself ridiculous and resolved to make a 
friend of the man. But the moment I reached this con¬ 
clusion other objections came to my mind. Why rush 
forward ? Wait, at any rate, until after Rhoda’s dinner. 

It was a calm and warm day. An hour or so later I 
moved my chair so that it was hard to tell whether I was 
more in the house than out of it, but my eyes were chiefly 
without, as I marked the green everywhere springing up. 
Suddenly I perceived Rhoda, walking up the road from the 
station. She was smartly gowned in a light suit; short 
skirts were in fashion and she looked well set off in them. 
I wondered whether she was coming in to see us or passing 
on the way to her own home, and I jumped up with 
pleasure when she turned in by my gate. 

“Is Went in?” she asked when she spied me. 

“No, his recess was over last night and he’s back at 
Cambridge. Please stay a while and don’t be too dis¬ 
appointed.” 

“The bad boy!” she said, sitting down with much desired 
relaxation. 

“I didn’t know that anything was wrong with him, 
Rhoda,” I remarked, making a brave showing of parental 
satisfaction. 

“He came over to lunch with me to-day; I had no idea 
that his recess was over.” 

“What’s the difference?” 

“He was so excited about my job on the Tribune that 
I stopped to tell him that it was all settled this afternoon,” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


169 


“Oh, Rhoda, that’s perfectly splendid!” 

“Isn’t it? After all these years when I thought that 
everything was lost! Lee, you have no idea what it means 
to me. There’s something almost religious about it!” 

“Rhoda,” I said with some hesitancy, “I don’t regard it 
as a position that requires the best of your abilities as I’ve 
seen them, but I’m terribly pleased about it.” 

“It means,” she went on, really paying no attention to 
me, “it means that I’ve solved the hardest problem. It 
doesn’t matter if my career never amounts to anything. I 
have a regular job, and . . . well, our new home . . . and 
everything . . . will somehow work out. There now, 
I’ve been talking too much!” 

“Nonsense,” I said, “you’ve a right to!” 

“I’m in a great hurry to run and tell O. F. # Should you 
like to walk over with me ?” 

“Nothing would suit me better.” I got up to look for 
my hat and stick. When I came back Rhoda was as though 
she had not moved, her eyes fixed upon the blue sky, her 
cheeks both pale and excitedly red in patches. “Come on, 
you’ve to go and tell Flarey.” 

“He’ll be so pleased,” she said, jumping to her feet. 

“And proud, too,” I added as we hurried down the 
road. 

“Speaking of Went, Rhoda, don’t you think that he looks 
as though he were getting ready for a flier?” 

“There’s nothing sudden about it, Lee.” 

“Oh, you noticed it, did you?” 

“Well, rather.” 

“I should prefer keeping my hands out of it, Rhoda, but 
if you ever feel that the responsibility of acting as nurse 
girl for my boy is too great to assume I can pack him off 
for you.” 

“Don’t worry about it. Leave it to me. Trust me and 
I’ll give you back your boy no worse.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


170 

“Why, I’ve always trusted you, old girl. I mentioned 
it for your sake, not mine or even his.” We said nothing 
for a while and then I added: “The moment he found 
himself worked up he naturally shunned his father and 
became studiously secretive about all the little things in 
life.” 

“He’ll get over it, Daddy Seebohm! Don’t you worry.” 

“My dear lady, nothing could be further from my mind. 
The only reason I spoke was that I foolishly thought you 
didn’t know what was up. As a matter of fact, since such 
things must be, I’m damned glad you’re the lady!” 

“Thank you for your trust, Lee.” 

“Good-bye and good luck with your new job.” 

Leaving Rhoda outside of her highly ornamental, Col¬ 
onial house, I walked home feeling a bit younger myself by 
way of thinking about Wentworth. I had a picture of him 
at Cambridge, probably not studying vigorously but 
turning page after page without being able to find one 
that was not a futile blank compared to the vivid, en¬ 
trancing, promising, and significant picture of Rhoda 
Lispenyard-Child that his imagination kept thrusting be¬ 
fore him and refused to withdraw. 

Rhoda, on the contrary, reflected upon nothing, but, 
seeking out O. F. in his office, threw herself into his arms, 
and burst into tears. She did not know precisely why 
except that she had wanted ro all afternoon but could not 
find a suitable place. And through her tears came an inco¬ 
herent account of her good fortune. 

O’Flarity released himself and helped her to sit down 
in a great leather chair, upon the arm of which he himself 
perched at a safe distance. He did take out his hand¬ 
kerchief with the feeling that it was very considerate of 
him to remember such things. And it was hard for him 
to be considerate in such circumstances. He could under¬ 
stand tears when women had something to cry about, but 


HORATIO'S STORY 


171 

these unexplained outbursts required a great deal of tact. 
Tears were rather primitive anyway, or at least juvenile if 
not quite primitive, and he certainly could not remember 
having had recourse to them himself. 

Perhaps Rhoda realized the strain under which she 
had placed her husband, and, accepting the handkerchief, 
she tried to make short work of drying her eyes. 

“Pm sorry, Flarey. I know you don’t like me to cry, 
but I just couldn’t help it.” 

“Never mind, dear, you’ll be all right in a few moments. 
I knew you’d get the job if there was any possibility of it, 
and I certainly hope you enjoy it as much as you think you 
will. But you haven’t heard the news from my front yet. 
I’ve got my secretary, and I expect to get my whack at 
the Lowell Institute Lectures the year after next.” 

But Rhoda could not grasp these facts. She was con¬ 
scious that she was missing something, but she could not 
take it in. 

“What were you saying, darling?” she asked. He 
repeated his whole speech while his wife poked her foot in 
the trash basket and watched the act as though she were 
still thinking of something else. 

“I’ve made a deal with the dean,” he said in conclusion. 
“I’m to have leave to go off lecturing whenever an oppor¬ 
tunity comes up. I can have an assistant take my lec¬ 
tures.” Suddenly he noticed that there were still tears 
in Rhoda’s eyes. “Why, what’s the matter, Rhoda?” 

“Oh, nothing,” she said. 

He got up nervously, and then came back and sat down 
on the other arm of her chair. “Rhoda, it isn’t like you to 
cry. What’s the matter ? Tell me about it, Rhoda, darling. 
Look at me, please.” 

“It’s so hard to tell you, Flarey. You ought to have 
known of yourself. I came home so excited and pleased. 
I’ve been trying to work my way into something like this 


HORATIO’S STORY 


172 

for years. It means almost everything to me, and you 
simply threw a damper on the whole business. You 
wouldn’t listen to me, didn’t care what I was saying. . . .” 

“That’s not fair, sweetheart, I did pay attention to what 
you were saying. Frankly, I was somewhat startled by it.” 

“You didn’t seem startled. You seemed perfectly 
oblivious.” 

“Well, you see, I put it aside to consider later at my 
leisure. Come now, kiss and make up. Our trouble is 
we’ve forgotten how to relax. We have to see what this 
new cook is going to do for us. You go and bathe your 
eyes.” 

At supper they found very little to do but whisper 
noisily and impolitely upon the relative merits of the cook 
and waitress, while the latter was sufficiently distant not to 
overhear. Rhoda’s intense happiness had left her com¬ 
pletely and she veiled her fallen spirits by seeming to take 
a great interest in the way the household conducted itself. 

“I wish,” said O. F., “that Rachel (the waitress) would 
not remove the bread and butter until after the salad 
course.” 

“Tell her,” said Rhoda, “I’m sure she’ll pay more atten¬ 
tion to you than to me.” 

“Is it quite fashionable,” asked O. F. presently, “for 
waitresses to wear such very short skirts ?” 

“I don’t know, Flarey. I used to be an authority on 
women’s fashions before I met you. I used to edit a col¬ 
umn on the subject, but now my only interest is in literary 
fashions.” 

“I wonder if Professor McKenzie could teach that girl 
to wait without getting out of breath. They say his whole 
theory of hygiene is based upon correct breathing.” 

“You just don’t understand women, Flarey, she’s out of 
breath because you terrify her. You look at her as though 
she was an examination paper.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


173 

“The cook’s not bad to my reckoning. These apple 
fritters are fairly amusing.” 

They dined on the porch for the first time that year, but 
it turned suddenly colder and they were glad, after dinner, 
to go into the room that Rhoda had designed with so much 
care. Rhoda lit a cigarette, picked up the morning edition 
of the Tribune, and lay down upon the divan. O. F. 
smoked his pipe; he was plainly ill at ease; the scene before 
supper was still troubling his spirit, and in the absence of 
the maid it was obvious that Rhoda could not long preserve 
the peace. 

“I say, Rhoda,” said he, knocking out his pipe and fill¬ 
ing it up again as though he had started wrong the first 
time. “I say, Rhoda, I’m awfully sorry for what hap¬ 
pened before supper. It was damned egotistical of me. I 
don’t know why I should be so wrapped up in my own 
affairs. It’s terribly bad for a man to be so damned 
egotistical. I guess it’s the war. I was away so long, and 
then my books came out. You know, that was in some 
ways fortunate for me hereabouts. If a man comes down 
the street and into the university with a bundle of books 
under his arm and distributes them to all his students, 
their appreciation of the book is limited by their highest 
appreciation of the man. But to have your books come out 
when you’re not about the town and before anyone had 
heard you talk made a big difference. But I say, I shouldn’t 
be so self-centred about things, and I’m terribly sorry. 
It’s just so bully for you to get the job that I don’t know 
what to say.” 

He spoke warmly, enthusiastically. Even when he 
seemed incapable of grasping the situation really person¬ 
ally and fell to talking about O’Flarity Child, he was 
attractive in spite of himself. He went and sat down at 
her feet and took the paper away from her. Rhoda looked 
into his eyes. She never doubted that she loved him; and 


HORATIO’S STORY 


174 

she never lost faith in his greatness. It moved him to have 
her look searchingly into his eyes because her face seemed 
to reflect what she believed to be within him, and he buried 
his face in her idle hands. 

“Flarey, darling,” she said, softly, stroking his silken 
hair with one hand, “I think the only real desire that IVe 
had since we married has been to help you, and you mustn’t 
blame me for coming home with banners out and making a 
big fuss about my story.” 

“I don’t, sweetheart,” he said. “It was just nasty of 
me not to feel instantly proud and happy.” 

“And don’t ever imagine that fundamentally I think my 
personality of more importance than yours; I don’t. I 
think of you as a really great man; I think of your future 
as the great future. But I should never go on with you 
unless it were on the assumption of equality between us— 
not a real equality, but not the case of the strong man 
with a weak and silly wife. That would be so degrading, 
wouldn’t it, dear?” 

“Yes.” He was not fully convinced. He had known 
Rhoda to talk this way occasionally in the course of the few 
years that they had been together, but it had never seemed 
pressingly significant before. Hitherto his career had 
always dictated to some extent the limitations of her plans, 
but he had taken it for granted and had not realized what it 
meant. What hurt Rhoda’s feelings was not so much what 
she had relinquished on his account, but the way in which 
he disregarded her sacrifice. Did he think that she had 
been glad of an excuse to go abroad for two years, to go 
west for three, and to remain like Achilles sulking in his 
tent for almost two years? The last was not his fault 
directly, though it was his fault that she was not so far 
along in her profession when the war broke that to leave 
it would have seemed out of the question. At any rate he 


HORATIO’S STORY, 175 

had sometimes wondered why his wife was unhappy; it did 
not seem quite right for her to have so many reservations. 

“Well, anyway, if this job is what you want, why it’s a 
good thing that you have it, and I’m enthusiastic about it. 
So there!” He kissed her and went across the room 
to relight his pipe. “I say,” he went on, “you did an 
awfully good job on this house. I was a bit shocked at the 
big room with the two offices on each side, but I’m begin¬ 
ning to think it’s a pretty good scheme, though I hate the 
thought of our being so far apart when we’re both in 
the house.” 

“Well, when you’re working you’re a long way off 
anyway.” 

“I know, but I used to like having you about in the same 
room, somehow or other.” 

“But it exasperates me. I don’t like being in the same 
room with you unless you feel like giving me your first 
attention.” It sounded stupid as she said it, but there 
was no help for it. One has to say stupid things frankly 
now and then if one is to express oneself. If he got her 
meaning it did not really matter how it sounded. Of course 
she did not dislike his leisurely reading or doing little things 
when she was with him. What she objected to precisely, 
though she could not find the words for it or the courage to 
utter them, whichever it was, was his feeling that she needs 
must be ever present like a piece of furniture, what though 
he made no pretense of relaxing a particle from his labours. 

Flarey went to the fireplace and knocked out his pipe 
again. It was something that he did out of sheer nervous¬ 
ness, and Rhoda noticed it with the concern one might feel 
in observing a rapidly falling barometer. 

“Let me have one of your cigarettes, please,” he said. 

“What’s wrong with the pipe?” asked Rhoda as she 
threw her box across the room. 

“Oh, I don’t know . . . Nothing, I suppose.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


176 

“Well, then, what’s wrong with you?” 

“Nothing very serious. I’d like to think it over first.” 
“Oh!” 

“I wish the little things I do didn’t get on your nerves 
so.” 

“They don’t, only I wish you didn’t think some things 
little that mean a great deal to me.” 

“Rhoda, it’s sometimes . . .” 

“Now, for instance, I think we’d be better off if you 
could tell me spontaneously what’s on your mind—that is, 
of course, if I’m concerned. We might both do the 
thinking.” 

“But I’m not a spontaneous nature.” 

“And I’m evidently not. . . 

“All right,” said Flarey, “I’ll tell you. I didn’t want 
to at first because I hadn’t formulated my notions yet. It’s 
about household matters, domestic matters, entertain¬ 
ing and the like. I’m all at sea. We never had a real home 
before, and I don’t know anything about the administration 
of such matters. You see, if you’re going to be over in 
Boston every day, and we’re both in our respective sanc¬ 
tuaries in the evening, I don’t see how the house is going 
to run smoothly.” 

“Oh, confound it! That’s what I say!” 

“No, I mean it seriously, Rhoda. You and I constitute 
a family, and together as a family we shall have a social 
career of some sort.” 

“You can have that by yourself, Flarey.” 

“No, I can’t. I'm a married man, and a married man 
can’t figure socially alone. Not in this climate, anyway.” 

“So much the worse for the climate.” 

“But you don’t understand, Rhoda, and I don’t really 
know enough about it to express what I mean. You see, I 
take a great pride in this marriage of ours, and the house 
is a sort of representation of it in a way. I want it to be 


HORATIO’S STORY 


1 77 

the centre of things in Belmont; I want it to be a retreat 
from Arlington for the students we like, as well as for the 
instructors.” 

“If it’s going to be that you shall have to make it so 
yourself.” 

“But I can’t. I don’t know how. I can’t apply my mind 
to that sort of thing.” 

“It’s too bad, because my social life will be very different 
from yours. I shall have my own friends whom I meet 
in another sphere of life.” 

“It’s nothing extraordinary that I’m grasping for, 
Rhoda. But I’ve lived so long without any regular sort 
of home, you know, that I’ve practically been converted 
to domestic life. And I’m a bit glad of it, you know, but at 
the same time I don’t see how we are going to work it out.” 

“Flarey, I’m never going to work it all out for you. 
You won’t really like it if you don’t do your share. It 
will never mean as much to you as it will if you do your 
work in building up our little home. You’re right that 
the house in itself is nothing; it’s what we make of the 
house that counts, and you’ve got to do your part of it.” 

“Well, there you have the spontaneous expression of 
what I’m worried about, anyway. This house, without 
adequate management—because I’m no good at it and 
you’re going to be too busy. . . .” 

“I should say,” said Rhoda, holding her throat and 
walking toward the door of her workroom, “that you had 
better cultivate a little common sense.” She closed 
the door after her and hoped that O’Flarity would not 
notice it, which he did not, and flung herself upon the 
couch, trying to keep her sobbing from becoming audible. 

It was the first time that she had left him after a dis¬ 
agreement without clearing away all the clouds. This 
time they had had their disagreement and come together 
again, and the next quarrel arose so quickly that she was 


HORATIO’S STORY 


178 

appalled by it. If she had stayed and they had fought 
the thing out, she had no doubt that Flarey would have 
capitulated, and they would have come together again with 
the joy of demonstrative affection. 

Was it possible that all these long discussions never 
resulted in a single conviction for either side, that both 
of them became overpowered by emotion, and their minds 
continued each on its separate course? The question 
startled her and she sat up. That was surely what hap¬ 
pened this evening. They had clashed and in the heat of 
their feeling they had come together again; then, as they 
talked on, each seemed to recede to his former hostile 
position. 

Once accepted, this interpretation of her married life was 
not altogether disheartening. It explained away a great 
deal of unhappiness and it explained also why their joy 
was of such brief duration. That they loved each other 
profoundly she still believed; it was in mind and character 
that they were drifting apart. A candid realization of the 
situation was perhaps all that was necessary, though such 
a realization was in itself suggestive of future difficulty. 

Then and there she gave up the all-or-nothing theory 
of marriage. She would go on on a natural basis. Cer¬ 
tainly it was worth trying; it put her on her mettle. It 
meant that there was nothing static in their marriage; that 
it was something to fight for, to preserve. 

She would try, and it was never in her nature to try 
anything that she was not optimistic about. She got up 
and sat down at her desk; glancing at her calendar she saw 
“Friday: Gilman and Lee for dinner”. With the pad in 
her hand she tiptoed to Flarey’s study and knocked gently 
at the door. 

“Come in,” he said. Rhoda opened the door ever so 
little and regarded him with ironic caution. “Why should 
you knock, Rhoda ? I thought it was the new maid.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


179 

“Just because I’m coming in the capacity of social 
secretary.” 

“Social secretary? What’s that?” 

“What you were crying about after dinner.” 

“Oh, I’d forgotten.” 

“We have guests for dinner, Friday, Mr. Child. Messrs. 
Gilman and Seebohm.” 

“Oh, yes. I recall that now.” 

“What women shall I ask ?” 

“Oh, dear me! Why should you ask me? How should 
I know?” 

“Whom should I ask? What do you expect me to do? 
Ask women you dislike?” 

“I don’t know any women. Ask anybody.” 

“Dear, dear.” 

“Rhoda, I don’t understand why you make such a fuss 
over this thing.” 

“Oh, Flarey, you’re so incredibly stupid. Just an hour 
ago you were complaining bitterly about our social life. 
Now I ask you to help me set the table as any house¬ 
wifely woman would do, and you’re getting indignant about 
it!” 

“I don’t know any single women.” 

“Well, you should know some women if you want to 
set yourself up as the Czar of your new society. You 
can’t expect me to do everything for you. It ought to be 
fairly obvious to you that I can’t make you do what you 
will have to do yourself.” 

“I’m impractical. You should make some allowances 
for that.” 

“Listen, darling,” Rhoda was losing patience again. “I 
didn’t come in for one of these general discussions, but 
I can no more make allowances for your being impractical 
than you can make allowances for my being busy. You’re 
not impractical; I once thought you were but I’m sure now 


i8o 


HORATIO'S STORY 


that you’re not. What you are is helpless; you’re a big 
baby, and I want you to know that you can’t succeed 
socially, no matter how low you aim, unless you make 
the effort.” 

“All right, Rhoda. I’ll try to manage a little better 
in things like that. Meanwhile please balance off the gen¬ 
tlemen as best you can.” 

“Of course I will.” He sat down at his desk and began 
fumbling the papers, and Rhoda stroked his head. “I 
believe that you love me, Flarey.” 

“Why, of course I do, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her 
free hand. 

“I want you to know many women, O. F., in order that 
you can come to understand one a little better.” 


CHAPTER XI 


Meanwhile I was taking Rhoda’s dinner party as some¬ 
thing inexplicably humorous. While not knowing as much 
as I do now of the hubbub that preceded it in her own 
domestic circle, there were intimations that more was 
intended than a neighbourly dropping in for supper. In 
the first place, my wine cellar was tapped for the occasion, 
Rhoda having been unable to transport her stock from 
Chester, where she had laid in against the new laws. The 
fact that wine was to be served did not signify anything 
in itself, but that Rhoda took the time to come over to 
my cellar was a confession. It rather pleased me, however, 
to see an effort being made toward bringing social interest 
into life again. I had come to Belmont to be quite free of 
that sort of thing, but unbending consistency in such 
matters is the forerunner of senility, and I was glad that 
there would be an opportunity to break my own rules. I 
had become a bit tired of myself anyway, and I wanted to 
let others distract me. 

With these thoughts in mind I departed from the pro¬ 
fessional tardiness of wearing afternoon dress in the eve¬ 
ning, and quite overwhelmed Jenkins by a sharp order to 
have my dinner suit laid out. It hurt his pride, apparently, 
that I had not told him some days before, for the clothes of 
my former festivities had been two years in camphor, the 
odour of which he thought might prove upsetting. This 
savour, however, was not volatile after a hasty pressing 
and an hour in the sun; and, setting myself in order, I took 
my hat and stick and started to walk down the road to 
the Childs'. 

But before I had gone many steps it occurred to me that 

181 


182 


HORATIO'S STORY 


I should come prepared to take somebody home, so I 
returned to the house, filled a cigarette case, and went to 
the garage and took the runabout, the closed car being out 
of repair. 

Such precautions, however, were far from necessary, 
for Rhoda shouted with derision on learning of them. 
But although it shocked her sense of modernity, it never¬ 
theless pleased her that I had the courage and the formality 
to suggest that I could take home anybody she indicated. 

But I am getting ahead of my story. The dinner itself 
was a bore. Whether the dean and his wife constituted 
Flarey’s idea of single ladies, I have no notion; but they 
were there. Probably he snatched them up in nervous 
excitement to prove to Rhoda that he could produce guests 
upon demand, and it is only fair to say that he may possibly 
have thought that having them this once would make it 
unnecessary to entertain them again for some time. 

At any rate, that was all this dinner party amounted to, 
a bald statement of solvency in a social sense. Rhoda’s 
conception of single women was the stark truth; she 
produced the Misses Tillmore and Goodshoe, old acquaint¬ 
ances of her spinsterhood, and I forgot to ask whether she 
thought I should like them any better for not having seen 
them for seven years. Once you forgave their habit of 
tittering and not quite meaningful laughter, you found 
them fairly interesting and pleasantly disposed women. 

The presence of the dean and his wife, however, was 
what threw me into bad humour immediately. There are 
instances when my dislike of a person gives me pleasure, 
but in the case of the dean I never had even that satisfac¬ 
tion. I am still ashamed of the pettiness of my feeling to¬ 
ward him, but I can no more control it than I can prevent 
the gray in my hair encroaching upon the last suggestion of 
colour. I am told I could have it dyed, and that I could 
convince myself that the dean is the glorious soul that he 


HORATIO’S STORY k 183 

is reputed to be, but it never occurred to me to try 
either. 

Two of the things that irritate me about him are the 
facts that he rarely closes his lips, though he sometimes 
gets his lower jaw up as far as it will go; and that the 
straight-haired moustache which he has for the purpose 
of shielding his imperfect teeth from conspicuousness, does 
nothing of the kind. Dean Hotchkiss has small eyes and 
puffy cheeks; he is a short, stout man, pompous, and makes 
a blowing, almost gasping sound when he talks. 

Years ago he was a rival candidate for my chair and 
never forgave me my success. I always think of him as 
he speaks in faculty meetings, giving his reports and 
explaining why students have been expelled. His convic¬ 
tion that a scandal or a breach-of-promise suit, when it 
reaches the newspapers, is sufficient to separate any stu¬ 
dent from the university, is one that I do not share. 

There is, however, something irrational in my dislike 
of the man. When young Mr. Hastings of Harvard tells 
me that he has written a new history of philosophy and 
then confesses blushingly an hour or two later that he 
has gone no further than ancient Greek philosophy because 
he thinks that it is a waste of time to read anyone later 
than Aristotle, I am highly amused and like the man 
for it. But when Hotchkiss tells me that he takes no 
interest in philosophy later than Mr. Arthur James Bal¬ 
four’s Defense of Philosophical Doubt (1879) and the 
same author’s Foundations of Belief (1895), it makes 
the gooseflesh stand out all over me. 

Mrs. Hotchkiss is distinguished in these unshackled 
times by giving the impression of being an extremely well- 
corseted woman. She has one of those silken, bustling, 
black and beaded figures, and belongs to the type of woman 
who never receives any attention unless her husband is 
taking honours or decorations. On such an occasion the 


HORATIO'S STORY 


184 

husband says in a few well-chosen words: “These 
honours, ladies and gentlemen, embarrass me more than I 
can well express. If I ever have done anything to merit 
them, I am sure that the credit really belongs to Mrs. 
Hotchkiss.” Dean Hotchkiss waives all argument as to 
whether he is a great figure in the history of education; 
what he insists upon is that if he has ever amounted to 
anything it is through the devotion and inspiration of 
Mrs. Hotchkiss.” 

To extend my prejudice to this excellent woman is 
doubly shameful, but I am as helpless as in the case of her 
husband. 

The students call her “old flannel petticoats.” 

Thanks to Rhoda I found myself between her two 
spinsters. Miss Goodshoe is a journalist or a dispenser of 
publicity—I don’t remember which—and Miss Tillmore is 
an actress, lately of some popularity, I hear. But that 
night I could not remember these facts and I kept turning 
desperately from one to the other, trying to avoid Mrs. 
Hotchkiss, who sat directly opposite me. Before we had 
finished the soup I felt that I was beaten in my intention 
to avoid being drawn into a general conversation. I feared 
that my antipathy for the dean would somehow become 
well recognized by everyone present and, just as I was 
about to give up, Miss Goodshoe, with one of those sudden 
half turns of the head, came to my rescue. 

“You’re very polite to pretend, Mr. Seebohm, but you 
really didn’t recognize me a bit.” 

“Oh, yes, I did. I know I haven’t your name yet, but 
it will come presently.” 

“Maybe you can recall my name—that’s a mere trick.” 

“But, my dear lady, I used to see you often. ... I used 
to see you in that little Beacon Hill apartment of Rhoda’s.” 

“That’s right.” 

“And you used to think me intolerable ?” 

“Oh, no. Once you said something very pretty. . . 


HORATIO'S STORY 


185 


“And you were surprised ?” 

“No,” she said, leaning toward me and whispering. “I 
wanted to corner you and talk to you about it ... ” 

“I don’t believe it; you never did.” 

“. . . and you held me off!” 

“I don’t believe it. It’s impossible.” 

Her whispering had the effect of causing Mrs. Hotchkiss 
to lean a bit forward and divide her attention between try¬ 
ing to hear and trying to express facially her disdain for 
the outrage. Flarey thought our conversation insubstantial 
and tried once more to move the whole table toward some 
triumph of concerted talk. He had something of the 
same trouble that I had; he would look at the dean and find 
him open-mouthed, and then he would lose track of what 
he intended to say. 

“It’s wonderful to be settled down here at last,” he said 
finally, looking at me to avoid seeing Hotchkiss. 

“I should think it would be a great satisfaction,” said 
Gilman from the other end of the table. All evening 
he had been talking to Rhoda exclusively and we were all 
surprised that he realized that there were others present. 

“But I wouldn’t have lost one day of our exile,” said 
O. F. “We met so many people and saw so much that we 
should otherwise never have had the opportunity to see. 
Even that awful job in the West—I shouldn’t have missed 
it for anything in the world. I can’t bring myself to 
believe that a sabbatical year will ever mean more to me 
than an opportunity to work on a new book.” 

“I’m glad you don’t figure on travelling,” said Miss 
Goodshoe. “It would be so hard for me to imagine what 
Rhoda would do.” 

“Why attempt it?” said Rhoda quickly. 

“Now that Rhoda has the Tribune book review,” said 
O’Flarity, laughing, “we can make a deal whereby you 
write the reviews of my books and I do yours.” 


186 HORATIO'S STORY 

“It would be splendid for me because I never write 
reviews/’ I said. 

“We’ve got to do something to get Seebohm to write 
reviews, Dean Hotchkiss. Don’t you think so?” asked 
O’Flarity. 

“By all means.” 

“But, Flarey, dear,” said Rhoda, “you can’t have Lee’s 
new book if there ever is one, I’m going to whack hell 
out of it myself personally!” This remark did nothing 
to make Dean and Mrs. Hotchkiss feel at home. 

“Don’t you want to change your mind about bringing out 
this book, Mr. Seebohm?” asked Gilman, who had a fine 
way of announcing his irony by changing the pitch of his 
voice ever so little. 

“No,” I said. “I’d trust the editor further than the 
reviewers.” 

“Hear, hear!” 

“Seriously, though, Lee, you should write reviews,” said 
Flarey in the tone of a man who is defending himself by 
his attack on another. 

“Why should any man write book reviews who doesn’t 
care to?” asked Gilman. “The world doesn’t suffer from 
a lack of faint-hearted criticism.” 

“Doesn’t it, though ?” said Rhoda. 

“No, I mean it,” said O’Flarity, quite unnecessarily, for 
we all believed him. “I think that men like Lee owe it 
to the community to use their critical judgment publicly, 
so that they can have an influence upon the younger man.” 

“But I have no consciousness of owing the public any¬ 
thing whatever,” I said. 

“But it’s such a narrow view. I’m sorry that you’re so 
far away from the public. There’s no need of it.” 

“I quite agree,” said Hotchkiss, “and I feel strongly 
that the Arlington staff should be more publicly recognized. 


HORATIO’S STORY 187 

I think it’s fine for the members of the faculty to reach 
the public through the dignified press.” 

“I disagree with you, sir,” I said, “in your view that 
the faculty should play to the dignified galleries. I owe 
the students who come to me the best that I can give 
them, and the rest of my time I devote to science—not 
priggishly, of course, to the exclusion of my pleasure. I 
don’t see that it’s narrow of me—unless possibly in a 
literal sense—to prefer a private career to a public one.” 

Flarey, however, was sincerely lost. 

“Then why do you write a book at all ?” 

“Out of sheer inconsistency, I suppose. It’s only fair 
to say that I do it most infrequently—perhaps twice in 
fifty years, if I live. Or say that I do it for science, if you 
must be moral about it.” 

I turned to Miss Goodshoe, hoping, at the cost of rude¬ 
ness, to break up the general conversation into a group of 
tete-a-tetes, but before I could catch my breath or formu¬ 
late words I heard Gilman, to my surprise, taking up my 
defense. “I think Mr. Seebohm mistakes himself for the 
ancient and unfortunate shoemaker whom the gods 
adjured to stick to his last.” 

“What was it I said to you some years ago?” I asked 
Miss Goodshoe. 

“What do you want to know for ?” 

“For one thing I want it for my book.” 

“Oh, no—not that.” 

“But you don’t really believe that story, do you ?” 

“Which ?” 

“About you’re wanting to have it out with me in 
private.” 

“Absolutely. You held me off.” 

“Well, what was it I said?” 

“I’ll never tell.” 

“I don’t believe a word of the story.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


188 

“You probably didn’t notice the whole thing. YY>u were 
in love with somebody else at the time.” 

That silenced me. Feeling that I couldn’t handle the 
dinner either close at hand or across the table, I was glad 
to contemplate the fact that it would not last forever and 
watched Gilman and Rhoda, who seemed to be getting on 
famously. 

The coffee was followed by clearing the table, and I 
was surprised by the arrival of other guests. 

“Don’t look as though you never saw anything like it,” 
said Rhoda, taking me aside. “Flarey started inviting peo¬ 
ple and he didn’t know where to stop. The result is that 
the evening we planned with Gilman is going to be a sort 
of general reception to the faculty, the wives, the adult 
children, and, even the students.” 

“No,” I said. “That’s the end of a perfect day!” 

“True enough,” said she. “I’m so frightened I just 
can’t take it seriously.” 

I quickly found that she was telling the truth. They 
began to come if not in droves, so fast and thick that I 
thought it impossible to be presented to each one separately, 
and, seizing a stout cigar, I escaped through one of the 
French windows. 

Before I quite realized what I was doing I found myself 
reading in my own library. It was still early, my book 
absorbed me, and I had just decided to finish the chapter 
before going back to Childs’, when hurried footsteps on 
the porch disturbed me. I went to the door, a tower of 
indignation, only to find my son Wentworth. 

“Oh,” I said, “I thought you were in Cambridge!” 

“I came home to change, father,” he said in great excite¬ 
ment. “I’m going over to Rhoda’s. Sorry I startled you, 
father, but I’m afraid someone stole the runabout. Shall 
we telephone the police ?” 

“Not yet,” I said, laughing. “I think we can find it.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 189 

We went over together and it amused him hugely to hear 
of my retreat. 

When we arrived both Rhoda and O’Flarity were busily 
engaged in showing people the house, and explaining as 
well as they could how it happened to be the way it was. 

And the house did lend itself to curiosity. Why was 
the library divided in two in just that obvious way, and why 
the two little offices, one on each side? Did they always 
expect to dine in their living room? And what kind of 
housekeeping did they expect to do with such a small 
kitchen ? 

In the effort to answer these and many other questions 
the company disintegrated; everyone ran about examining 
things minutely. 

Rhoda, who had broken loose from the crowd, suddenly 
came up behind me and seized my arm. “If another 
person tells me that that kitchen is too small, I shall fall 
on the floor and scream!” 

“Let’s look at the garden,” I said. “Not enough atten¬ 
tion has been paid to the exterior.” 

“Fine,” said Rhoda, and we went out to the porch, which 
was empty. 

“Why go further ?” I murmured. 

“I really shouldn’t be running away from my guests; 
it’s awfully rude.” 

“Never mind,” I said. “It’s quiet here. Won’t you have 
a cigarette?” 

“Just one,” said Rhoda, “and then I’ll go back.” I 
struck a match; her face was all anxiety. 

“Rhoda, don’t take this party too hard. I’ll concede that 
it’s a failure. You shouldn’t try this kind of thing. It’s 
all right for women who are home all day to plan and fix 
and fret; but when you come home at night you need 
relaxation, and you should have the small and intimate 


iqo HORATIO'S STORY 

gathering, so that you can excuse yourself and take it 
easy.” 

‘‘Lee, it isn't that that oppresses me to-night. I know 
I can’t handle this kind of a party, and I wouldn’t do it 
again for anything. This was mere obstinacy on my part. 
I ought to have told Flarey not to do it, but I thought he 
wanted to, so I let him prove it to himself that he was 
wrong. 

“What bothers me to-night is that I have a feeling that 
all these people here despise me. Tell me it isn’t true, or 
tell me that it is true and I’ll go back and fight them. I do 
feel as though I ought to know the truth before I clench 
my fists.” 

“I should say, Rhoda, that it would be better to know it 
and keep it to yourself.” 

“Well, what is the truth of the matter, Lee? Tell me 
quickly. I’ve almost finished my cigarette.” 

“Well, I think the truth is something like this. A crowd 
hates the individual, and this crowd is just like any 
other.” 

“What I feel is that they resent my having built the 
house my own way, and, as they can’t very well admit it, 
they curse at it. They resent my having a den like Flarey’s. 
When they see his they say ‘how lovely’, and when they 
see mine it’s ‘how strange’.” 

“It’s perfectly obvious that they resent your having a 
job.” 

“I knew it,” she said, getting up and clenching her fists. 

“Sit down, Rhoda. Use your sense of humour. It’s the 
most natural thing in the world. You can’t possibly hope 
to get on in a set of idle, vain, and useless women. You 
can’t expect them to like you. They refuse; they’re jealous 
of you. And the men feel that they have to take the part 
of their women.” 

“Oh, how I hate the whole business!” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


191 

The door of the porch opened and an unsteady hand 
paused before opening it the whole way. 

“Hang it all! I say it’s tedious.” It was Gilman’s 
voice, and I had a premonition that he had had a bit too 
much to drink. Instantly I felt that there was something 
wrong, but I could not hear what it was that he had pro¬ 
nounced tedious. He was not the kind of man I should 
expect to overstimulate himself. He had seemed to me 
too much of the world not to hold stoically what little 
liquor was to be found. Rhoda also was startled by his 
voice; I observed that she relaxed her hands at his ex¬ 
clamation. What was said in reply we could not hear, but 
Gilman began again. 

“With men it’s too easy in this country,” and he came 
out upon the porch, shutting the door behind him. “Oh, 
I say, are you there! I didn’t know that. I’ve been having 
a discussion and I’m afraid I’ve behaved myself most 
reprehensibly.” 

“I think I’d better go in, Lee,” said Rhoda, “please 
excuse me, Mr. Gilman, but I have to go back to my 
guests.” She hurried by us and was gone. I looked at 
Gilman in the light that flashed through the window as 
Rhoda withdrew. He had certainly overtaxed himself, 
and for some reason or other it delighted me. 

“I say, it’s a wonderful night, Seebohm, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, it is; it’s been hard for me to stay indoors.” 

“Don’t let me keep you from the ladies, Seebohm.” 

I laughed outright; Gilman muttered softly: “I think 
I am out of the running so far as women are concerned for 
the rest of the evening.” 

“Perhaps I should go and have a drink myself.” 

“By all means, old fellow, but before you go I wish that 
you would assist me in a matter of etiquette, American 
etiquette.” 


192 HORATIO'S STORY 

“I’m sure I’m worse off in that respect than you, Gil¬ 
man.” 

‘‘Oh, how absurd of you! You know that you could not 
make a false step. The Christian Professor of Brewer 
Morals can do no wrong.” 

“No? I never thought of that before. Well, what’s 
your question?” 

“What was I going to say? Oh, now I know. I say, 
would it be more obvious if I left my hat and stick and 
chucked it all, as I am, or do you think I should try and 
find them in my present condition ?” 

“I think I can evade your question with theological 
astuteness. Suppose I get your hat and stick, and present 
your compliments to Mrs. Child ?” 

“Oh, that would be ripping! I say, that’s ever so decent 
of you.” 

“Not at all,” I said, and went in through the window. 

It was by no means as easy as I had thought, for I had 
the misfortune to collide with a good many people who 
thought that I owed them more than a bow, and I have no 
doubt I did. Flarey was at one end of the room standing 
up and holding forth to about fifteen or twenty eager 
listeners. Rhoda had her hands full trying to serve refresh¬ 
ments to about as many. Wentworth was helping her and 
I was a moment or two in catching his ear. “Tell Rhoda 
that Gilman and I are bolting, will you, Went? She’ll 
understand.” 

By the time I had found our things and gone out upon 
the veranda again, I was dismayed to find that I had come 
none too soon. 

On the lawn a young student and a young woman, prob¬ 
ably also a student, had fled the crowd and were holding 
what seemed to be a most engaging and exclusive chat 
upon a stone bench. My friend Gilman was approaching 
the bench from the rear with uncertain steps. He would 


HORATIO’S STORY 


I 93 

come fairly close and then fall back, and from their glances 
over their shoulders the youngsters were quite dismayed. 
In the circumstances they did not know whether the dean 
was giving an ear to their tender utterances, or whether 
some rough character had lost his way and was about to 
do something plainly embarrassing, such as ask them for 
coffee money or something to eat or drink. 

“Dash it all!” shouted Gilman, just as I reached the 
scene. “Can no one tell me where the devil to find the 
tramway? I’ve lost my sense of direction.” 

“Never mind the trolley, Gilman; let me take you home 
in the machine.” 

“Oh, did you get my things? Thanks awfully. This 
makes me feel quite myself again.” 

The runabout was hard by, and we were off before any¬ 
one realized it. 

“How should you like to take the air,” I asked, “before 
we go in ? Are you warm enough ?” 

“Ripping, but if you’re driving you won’t talk, and I 
should rather sit and talk a while. You Americans always 
want to do something.” 

He was one of those men who think in terms of nation¬ 
ality when intoxicated. 

“All right,” I said, “we can stop at my house down the 
road here and talk as long as you please.” 

We were there in a moment. I turned up a lamp and 
found two chairs. Gilman sat down and stretched out 
his legs. 

“I wish you could explain American life to me. It’s so 
awfully difficult for me to get an idea of what is in the 
minds and hearts of the people in this country. I’ve never 
been to a social event that wasn’t as awful as that one 
to-night!” 

“Well, I am not in a position to criticize intelligently. 
I’ve no basis for comparison, Gilman. I hate travel, and 


194 HORATIO’S STORY 

so I don’t know the least thing about English society, 
for instance.” 

“Well, I don’t know that English society is really any 
better. It has different manners, and it looks different, but 
when you get right down to it, Seebohm, the bohemians are 
the only people who have a decent life socially. They make 
themselves ridiculous, of course; but among themselves, 
I mean, they seem to be having a jolly good time, whereas 
we respectable people never seem to be quite able to play 
the formal and conventional game that we put before us. 
Either we get hurt, or we break the rules deliberately, or 
the rules break us, because we can’t ride them like horse¬ 
men. If one is to be formal one should be a member of 
the French aristocracy before the revolution. Otherwise 
the only thing I can see is to be out-and-out bohemian.” 

“That’s interesting,” I said. “Why didn’t you talk that 
way over at the Childs’ ?” He was not under the influence 
of alcohol to the extent that he himself feared when he 
asked me to help him get away. Nevertheless, his imagina¬ 
tion was stimulated and many reservations normal to him 
were broken down; as is usual in intoxication, habit was as 
strong as ever, only the reserve vanished. 

“I couldn’t have; they would have all thought it was 
propaganda.” 

“Probably,” I admitted. 

“What was it that you said was tedious, just as you were 
coming out on the porch ?” 

“Oh, I remember,” he said, going on as though I did not 
exist except as stimulus, “some professor of sociology.. . .” 

“Billings was the only one there.” 

“. . . Yes, Billings was asking me my opinion about 
American life, and I said that it’s a land of interesting 
women and dull men. In any level of society the women 
have more character than the men. And a large part of the 
social difficulty is that the men feel it and react to it dis- 


HORATIO’S STORY 


195 

honestly. While they pretend an equality of sex as no 
other race pretends it, they treat women as inferiors 
in fact, which is of course the bane of any social set. Do 
you remember Meredith’s Essay on Comedy? He makes 
the point that without an assumption of social equality 
between the sexes no really polite comedy can exist. The 
American likes to honour women with many words; he 
likes equality in law and politics and business. But in 
society he doesn’t treat a woman as an equal; it would 
make him feel foolish; it would make him conscious of his 
inferiority.” 

“Well, is the position of English women any better?” 

“I don’t really know. I’m not talking absolutely, I’m 
thinking aloud. Take that Child family. Mrs. Child is in 
every way superior to Mr. Child as a person and as a 
character. She’s much too interested in her career and her 
place, but that’s because it’s the only way she can com¬ 
mand the respect she deserves, or she thinks it is. But 
she’s rounded, luxurious, full of emotion, and not ashamed 
of her better nature. Now her husband is a very promising 
young university don, but he goes about being one just the 
way a business man goes about being a success in the world. 
All the professional men I’ve met in this country ply their 
professions with so much materialism that they ruin them¬ 
selves socially. Those people there to-night, Seebohm, 
were all rather sneering at her and all sniveling patroniz¬ 
ingly at him. I know them; I watched them.” 

So Gilman had noticed it, too. 

“It’s a country,” he said at length, “of great women,” a 
remark that did not then appeal to me strongly, whether 
just or not. 

“Scotch or Rye?” I asked. 

“Thank you, no,” he said with a laugh. “If you’ll show 
me the way to the tramway, I’ll not trouble you to take 


me in. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


196 

“I should like to. I don’t expect to get to sleep for some 
time.” There were few cars on the road, and I took him 
in to his lodging on Pinkney Street so quickly that I 
was back within an hour. I slipped into a smoking jacket 
and sat down in my little room upstairs. Rhoda was none 
too happy, something or other was seriously troubling her 
mind. Clearly it was none of my business and yet my 
friendship for her seemed to be regaining its old power and 
I wanted to let her know how I felt. 

Gilman seemed to me an element in the situation. I 
wondered whether Rhoda had fallen in love with him. 
Who was he? What was he? I had no idea, and the 
answers to such questions seemed to me irrelevant. My 
musings were interrupted by Wentworth, who knocked 
upon my door. 

“Come in, son,” I said. He looked tired and his cheeks 
were flushed. There was something downcast in his head 
and shoulders. 

“Rhoda was very beautiful to-night,” he said, dropping 
into a chair. 

“She has always seemed so to me,” I ventured. 

“But to-night she was different. I don’t know just how 
to explain it. Usually when Rhoda and I are together she 
seems so young and playful that I forget her age com¬ 
pletely, but to-night she seemed so very old, a sort of 
majestic, middle age. Perhaps it was her gown; Pm used 
to her in knickers or sport clothes.” 

“I thought her gown in excellent taste,” I said. 

“It’s funny, dad. I’ve seen so much of Rhoda lately, 
but I had no idea how beautiful she was in that dignified 
way. I used to think evening clothes a bore, but I don’t 
see why Rhoda ever wears anything else.” 

“They’d hardly do over at the Tribune office.” 

“I wish she didn’t go to the Tribune, father, really 
I do.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


19 7 


“Why ?” 

“Well, it’s a bother and there's no real need for it. And 
then, other people don't like it. They all laugh at her for 
insisting upon doing a regular day’s work.” 

“I’m not altogether sure of that, son. There are a 
good many people who admire her for the way she’s taken 
hold since she got back.” 

“You may, dad, and Flarey may, but almost everybody 
thinks poorly of her for doing it.” 

“What makes you think that, son?” 

“Oh, well, I notice the way people do. Flarey is re¬ 
garded as a great man; he’s going to be a world beater. 
Everybody has heard of him; people wait for his books and 
his lectures. The highbrow clubs all want him to come 
and talk. And when people get excited about a man and 
think he’s a genius, it seems funny for his wife to be 
bothering about a little job.” 

“You surprise me very much, Went.” 

“Oh, no, father! I’m crazy about Rhoda. But I like 
her as a chum, as somebody for golf, and tennis, and 
riding ! She’s a wonderful motorist, too ! She’s a terribly 
good chum.” 

“Well, I wonder if she would be such a good chum if 
she weren’t trying to be a good woman, too.” 

“I don’t know, dad,” said Wentworth, getting up and 
finding it difficult not to stretch and yawn. “A good many 
people try awfully hard to do the right thing and go dead 
wrong. Good-night. I think I’ll sleep here and go back to 
Cambridge in the morning.” He lit a cigarette and went 
to his room. 

I have heard that mothers upon first seeing their babes 
are sometimes incredulous and refuse to believe that they 
actually produced such hopelessly embryonic beings. Many 
times, but never more acutely than that night, did I feel 
that it was hard to believe the facts of Wentworth’s origin. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


198 

I had never dreamed that he could turn against Rhoda as 
a woman, yet that was what he had come pretty near 
doing. 

He did it in the heat of his youthful love. Not that 
love is not always youthful and that it does not in its 
nature defy all wisdom, but that first love, unlike the 
others, seems to me doubly subjective. He had, from the 
moment that he had fallen in love with Rhoda, begun to 
think of her in terms of his own emotion, and the only 
powerful sensation he had experienced thus far was self- 
love. And youth, while it is far from conservative—for it 
lays waste and destroys with a light heart—is extraordi¬ 
narily conventional. The further back one goes in anthro¬ 
pology, the more conventional primitive man appears, 
and in youth we are conventional without questioning. 
Wentworth, like Gilman, had been a keen observer at 
Rhoda’s party. Gilman had noticed the general veneration 
of O. F. and the veiled contempt for Rhoda, and having 
had perhaps a very little more wine than was good for him, 
he knew that he could not disguise his sentiments and so 
made a bolt for the door. I must admit that after seeing 
my son that evening my opinion of Gilman rose; he had 
retired in good order, hopeless though his flight appeared. 
Wentworth, on the other hand, whatever his emotions and 
previous judgments had been, was overpowered by the 
majority opinion. He was not old enough to understand, 
and his sympathy was undone by the force of his primitive 
instinct to line up with the crowd. 

The next day I said nothing, but I planned a complete 
change in the course of study I had mapped out for him 
that summer. It is perhaps a mistake to think, as Bacon 
did, that every ill of the soul has a cure in a course of 
study; but it could certainly not seriously retard any prog¬ 
ress that he might naturally make. 


HORATIO’S STORY 199 

With these thoughts still in my mind I was about to go 
for a stroll when I saw Rhoda coming up the path. 

'‘Don’t tell me what a rotten party it was!” she shouted. 

“I had no such intention.” 

“I talked it over with Charles Gilman at lunch to-day 
and I don’t want to hear any more about it.” 

“It’s always a mistake to judge a party,” I said. “It 
makes you feel as though you should never attempt 
another.” 

“I never shall,” she said, resting one foot on the bottom 
of the step and looking up at me. “Were you going for a 
walk, Lee ?” 

“Should you like to join me?” 

“No, I’m tired. Let’s sit down on the steps for a 
moment.” 

“You had tea with Gilman?” 

“No, lunch. I don’t get time to have tea any more.” 

“That’s too bad.” 

“Which ?” 

“Tea is a good habit.” 

“Gilman said you were a good sport last night.” 

“He means I listened to him.” 

“Did he say much ?” 

“Not a great deal. But he wanted to talk and I was 
very much interested. I felt naturally curious about him 
but I didn’t think I had a right to ask him personal 
questions.” 

“I feel that way about him, too, Lee.” The innocence 
of it amazed me. 

“Do you mean to say you don’t know anything about 
this man at all?” 

“Almost nothing, Lee; he’s one of those people who 
come and go without explanation and without leaving any 
traces except in the hearts and minds of a very few people. 
You know that he’s practically an exile, don’t you?” 


200 


HORATIO’S STORY 


“Why, no. I don’t know anything about him at all.” 

“He’s teaching English at Latin Grammar School, which 
is quite ridiculous because he’s fitted to be a college pro¬ 
fessor in more than one subject. There was something 
wrong in England, and he had to cut loose. From bits of 
things he’s said I know he went into the war but he had * 
hard luck and couldn’t get into anything but some silly 
mission over here, buying horses or something like that. 
He’s a great horseman, and when he first came to this 
country, he made his living as a riding master and horse 
dealer.” 

“He seems to be a hard man to place,” I said. 

“Yes, all you can be sure of is that he’s a conquest of 
mine.” 

“I had no doubts of that after last night.” 

“I gave him a few books to review. He came and 
asked for them, and I think he writes very well.” 

“I didn’t know he did write.” 

“Oh, yes, he published a book on Mexican folk songs. 
He wrote down what he heard on a walking trip in Mexico 
—wrote it down music and all. It didn’t have a large 
sale, but it was a fine piece of work.” 

“I shall be interested to see his reviews. I almost 
brought myself to the point of asking him to dinner.” 

“Why don’t you ?” 

“I think I will.” 

“Do you want to stroll down toward my house ?” 

“Love to; let me take your bag.” 

“Thanks,” she said, getting up and smoothing out her 
skirt. “I’m about all in.” 

“Working hard?” 

“It isn’t so hard. It’s against pressure.” 

“I don’t understand,” I said. 

“The confounded paper is so big, and there are so many 
superiors and inferiors who have to be considered. Most 


HORATIO’S STORY 


201 


of my best energy that ought to go into my work will have 
to be wasted in fighting against petty jealousy. But it 
isn’t only jealousy, there are some people there who aren’t 
fit to be on any paper. Ostensibly I’m in charge of the 
weekly book section, but when anything really important, 
or that they think really important, comes up, they reach 
over into my department and start raising hell. I gave 
The Economic Consequences of the Peace to a well- 
known bank president to review, and then they jumped all 
over my dead body and wouldn’t publish it. Said it was 
too radical.” 

“Well, Rhoda, you’ll meet with difficulties like that 
everywhere, in any walk of life. I’m often in trouble at 
the university.” 

“You! I never knew that.” 

“Certainly.” 

“Well, not because you’re too radical.” 

“Perhaps not,” I said with a smile, “though that criticism 
has been brought forward. No, there are always a number 
of people who think that my chair is not so well occupied 
as it would be if one of themselves had it. And they go 
to the most childish excursions of jealousy and slander. 
Once the dean thought he should take my chair and I his. 
I said let’s try it, and the result was remarkable. For a 
whole year not a single student was disciplined, and in the 
dean’s courses, English 47I1 and 121k, not a single student 
managed to get a passing grade.” 

“You’re absurd!” 

“When it comes to playing headmaster, I’ll admit it. 
But they were awfully glad to get me back in my place. 
There is still litigation with regard to the boys and girls 
who flunked.” 

“I wish I had your calm, sweet way of doing things, 
Lee. I always get excited. It hurts me here, in the 
middle,” she said, bringing her hands to her bosom. “I’ve 


202 HORATIO’S STORY 

always had to fight, fight for my honour. It all seems so 
terribly serious.” 

“Well, the difference is that I don't really care and you 
do. The things that are important to me are of no serious 
concern to most men and women.” 

“You know, Lee, some time in that office or elsewhere, 
there’ll be a question of principle, and . . .” 

We were at her gate, and we saw O. F. coming up from 
the trolley. He was carelessly dressed, with a cap and 
sack suit, and he carried his books in one of the green felt 
bags so common in Boston and thereabouts. When he saw 
us he tossed his cap and hurried to catch up. 

“Hello, Lee,” he said, “are you coming or going?” 

“Neither, I’m going for a walk.” 

“How are you feeling, Rhoda? Any better than this 
morning?” 

“Worse,” she said, “I’m tired all the way to my bones.” 

“That’s too bad,” said O. F. “I’m sorry. I asked 
Professor and Mrs. Amah of Johns Hopkins to dinner.” 

“Oh, my God!” shouted Rhoda, and I went for my 
stroll, leaving them to hurry into the house and prepare for 
what, to Rhoda, must have been an unpleasant ordeal. 


CHAPTER XII 


Young Wentworth had a birthday early in June and as 
he had manifested more interest in riding than most things 
that spring, I got him boots and saddle to celebrate the 
dawn of his twentieth year. I had expected an invitation 
to ride that beautiful Sunday, but my expectations were 
no more justified than are the similar expectations of most 
parents with regard to their children. Will a father never 
understand that when his son is trying to arrange a really 
happy day he leaves him out, except as a possible dining¬ 
room fixture. He had come in from Cambridge the night 
before, and let slip the remark, as he went early to his room 
with four or five books under his arm, that he would try 
not to disturb me when he rose early the next morning. 

I’m afraid he did not succeed in this delicate attention, 
for the new boots were hard and stiff, but I managed to 
roll over and sleep an hour or two longer on my bad side, 
after which I rang for coffee and journals, and finally 
got down to breakfast. I was perhaps halfway through 
with this formality when two figures approached the door 
with such lightness and rapidity that I knew they must 
have been running in play. There was the muffled thud of 
a soft, damp body against the door; the latch snapped, and 
Rhoda burst in—boots, breeches, a brilliant sweater, more 
tangerine than orange, and her short hair all a-flying. She 
slammed the door and turned the latch just before the 
second figure reached it; and he, hearing the latch click, 
did not pound in vain as he was supposed to do, but ran 
softly to one of the French windows and entered. 

20 3 


204 


HORATIO'S STORY 


Neither of them saw me. Wentworth looked as though 
he intended to catch Rhoda in his arms, and could see 
nothing else. She, feigning to look through the keyhole, 
had her back turned to both of us, but still seemed to 
signify by the lightness and joyfulness of her flight, that 
she hoped to be caught. 

The boy paused with an expression of vast delight upon 
his face. He seemed at once to forget the fact that they 
had been running playfully. His eyes fairly beamed with 
light and his cheeks burned; his hands, trembling, reached 
out for their object concretely, that is, with the fingers 
anticipating their grasp. Rhoda, gurgling with suppressed 
laughter, pretended that she did not know that Wentworth 
had come through the other way. I was asking myself 
whether I should make them aware of my presence when 
Rhoda, feeling something ominous in Wentworth’s unex¬ 
pected silence, suddenly straightened herself and faced 
him. 

“Don’t, Went,” she cried, fear taking possession of her 
instantly, “we’re too old for that sort of thing now!” 

Her expression as she looked into the boy’s eyes startled 
me so that I dropped my coffee cup, which had been some¬ 
where between its saucer and my lips, and created thereby 
not only a disagreeable sound but a shattering mess as 
well. 

“Damn it!” I said. “I needn’t have been so unpleasant 
about announcing myself.” 

“Why, father !” said Went. “Excuse us!” 

“Lee! I didn’t see you when I came in.” 

“No, you both seemed to be thinking of something else.” 

“Oh,” said Rhoda, dropping into a chair, “it’s true about 
my getting old. I get tired so easily.” 

I looked askance at Rhoda, and as I did so I thought I 
could feel Wentworth searching my face for a clue as to 
whether I understood the full significance of what I had 


HORATIO’S STORY 


205 

just seen, and when I turned to him I felt certain that he 
had reached his conclusion, which was, of course, that I 
understood nothing. 

“If you chaps are going to talk about growing old,” I 
said, “it won’t take you very long to come to the point that 
I hold the long distance record, so I think I’ll go and take 
a walk.” 

“May I join you?” asked Rhoda. 

“Delighted,” I said. “Coming with us, Went?” 

“I think I’d better change, father, it’s almost lunch,” 
he said, viewing Rhoda with disdain. It was one thing to 
come in from riding that way but quite another to go out 
walking with an elderly gentleman in such a costume. 

“You don’t look either old or tired this morning, Rhoda,” 
I said after we were clear of the house. “You know what 
makes a chap feel old? It’s when he can’t remember not 
being tired in the morning, as though sleep could no longer 
repair the damages.” 

Rhoda remained silent. There were too many people on 
the golf links and the sun was warm, even for June, so we 
struck a little road beneath the hill. 

“Do you remember how, as a little girl, you used to 
object to my saying that I thought you good-looking ?” 

“Yes, indeed I do. How stupid it was of me! The 
whole course of our lives seems to be changed by just such 
very little things as that. Isn’t that so, Lee?” 

“I shouldn’t wonder.” 

“As a child my father and mother used to make remarks 
about my appearance every time I came into the room. It 
seemed to them that that was the most important thing in 
my life, and to me it was something that I hated and could 
never understand. It was such a very small thing and 
yet. . . .” Rhoda paused, she did not want to talk; I won¬ 
dered why she had elected to walk with me. 

“I suppose little things do change you about,” I said, 


206 


HORATIO’S STORY 


“but I can’t imagine myself very different from what I 
am. Of course I might have enjoyed finance. There 
isn’t much more known about money than the things 
philosophers study. It might have been more satisfying 
to speculate in money than in ideas.” 

“And then there was my uncle’s fortune,” Rhoda went 
on without paying any attention to me, “another mere 
accident, that saved me from being a spinster schoolma’am 
all my life. If there is anything in the dignity of human 
life, how does it happen that such mere trifles change the 
whole course of it?” 

“I believe that they only seem to be trifles, Rhoda. 
If they really were they wouldn’t change so very much.” 

She walked with her eyes on the ground. Suddenly she 
took my arm—something she rarely did informally—and I 
knew that she was glad to be with me, whether she felt 
like talking or not. 

“I suppose I’m one of those little things in the life of 
your boy,” she said at length. 

We were passing some trees that offered tempting shade. 
“Let’s sit down and talk it over, Rhoda.” 

She threw off her sweater and we both sat down. 

“I can’t tell you all about it; at least not now. I only 
mean that suppose I’m not a fit woman to have mothered 
him as you wanted me to . . .” 

“Well, you’ve chosen a hard person to convince of that, 
Rhoda.” 

“Oh, you’re so kind, Lee!” 

“Nonsense, I’m rather hard. I know you’ve made mis¬ 
takes, but after all I never expect to find perfection in 
nature.” 

“But, Lee, my mistakes may have been fatal!” 

“Which ones?” I asked. “I used to think it was a 
mistake to have bobbed your hair, but I’m seduced by it this 
morning.” 


HORATIO'S STORY, 


207 


“Lee!” 

“Yes, I know how serious you are, but until you’re 
ready ... Will you have a cigarette?” 

“I’ll be ready to tell you everything sooner than you 
think. Don’t think that I don’t know how unkind it is for 
me to cling to you this way when I cannot tell you what is 
on my heart.” She took one of the cigarettes and, when I 
lit it, she put her elbows on her knees and sat with her 
chin resting on her clenched fists. Her hair seemed love¬ 
liness itself as it tossed in the breeze and I observed a 
new folding of the flesh in the outer corners of her eyes, 
which were still brilliant, more so than usual that morning 
for the suggestion of a tear that came and went. 

“May I help you on with your sweater? You’re over¬ 
heated, you know.” 

“Thanks, Lee.” When she was comfortable again, she 
went on: “I dread being alone. I was alone too much as a 
young woman. It made me grow up all awry. I have 
a horror of being alone. I don’t mind standing alone and 
fighting. I’ve always done that. But lately I’ve had so 
much warmth and companionship.” 

“Why should you dread being alone?” 

“I wonder myself, but I do. What will you do when 
Went grows up and leaves you? Don’t you dread it, too?” 

“I have never permitted myself to regard him as much 
more than a responsibility. And just as soon as I think he 
is able to stand on his own feet, I’ll send him about his 
business. He’s too young to associate with me.” 

“Oh, how can you! I should think you would adore him 
and never want him to part from you.” 

“As long as I can teach him, and as long as I think 
that he can’t face the world alone . . . but already we fail 
as companions. His mind is too strong and his character 
too strong for him not to try to meet me on my own plane 


208 


HORATIO’S STORY 


in a year or two, and that would be bad for him. It would 
be abnormal; it would deform his natural, steady growth." 

“But don't you dread being alone?" 

“Oh, I shall miss him, but I’m used to being alone." 

“I’ve got to go and get ready for dinner," said Rhoda, 
jumping to her feet as she looked at her watch. “It’s 
twelve-thirty!" 

I left her at her door and quickened my pace, walking 
four or five miles before lunch. Rhoda’s words had upset 
me far more than she knew, for, not having many personal 
ties in life, I am prone to be much affected by the unhappi¬ 
ness of the few friends that I have, as if nature awarded a 
compensating punishment for one so full of solitude. I 
recalled the image of her face when she turned upon Went¬ 
worth earlier that morning. Rhoda had known that the 
boy was in love with her and she knew that what happened 
at the close of that boisterous chase might have happened at 
any time. I thought that the horror that stole over her 
face had nothing directly to do with what she perceived 
in Wentworth. It came from within. 

She was unhappy about her relationship to Flarey, and 
had not fully realized how far they were drifting apart 
until that morning. Probably Wentworth’s emotion had 
moved her more powerfully than she had believed possible. 
At once it flashed upon her that her husband’s hold was 
weakening. 

Flarey had undoubtedly undergone sharp changes in 
personality, and they were not only sharp but deep. Every¬ 
one has a few stock notions about human character and 
I had always supposed, in my naive way, that the under¬ 
lying principles were fundamentally consistent. My 
acquaintance with him reduced me to one more point of 
skepticism. Of all the students who passed under my 
spectacles he had seemed to me the one most capable of 
straight thinking, and I have never seen fit to deny it. I 


HORATIO’S STORY 


209 

reasoned from this that he was apt to be unsuccessful 
in life at large, a profound and perhaps original thinker, 
not inclined toward making peace with the world, and 
certainly not establishing himself on a business basis. 

In this I had been in error. Almost as soon as O. F. 
fell in love with Rhoda, he lost interest in his work. Then, 
when he came back to it, it was with a new driving power. 
No longer was it work for its own sake, it was work as a 
means to an end. What I have never been able to under¬ 
stand about him, was how as able a thinker as he could 
have such a confusion of thought in the matter of the rela¬ 
tion of ends and means. With him, at any rate, philosophy 
certainly did not begin at home. 

There was a streak of moral cowardice about him; he 
was afraid to examine the ground upon which he stood. 
He had taken up a studious life because he believed that 
his health would permit no other, but when the opportunity 
came and he found that he could do as he pleased, what 
altered itself was his attitude and his method. He did not 
have the courage to seek out a profession that suited him 
by nature. Fully convinced of his greatness and fascinated 
by a vision of a career of large affairs, he began to fight 
for a position and a reputation in philosophy, and he 
applied all the methods of the clubman, the politician, the 
business man’s lawyer—all the methods, in short, of mate¬ 
rial life. 

Only a very able lecturer of philosophy could have done 
this without calamity. I regarded it as proof of his 
streak of genius that very few outside the inner circle 
of his home saw through the deliberate mechanics of his 
plan, and that those nearest him lost sight of his real 
virtue on account of the offensiveness of his methods. 
He began tampering with the legend that hung over his 
name. That, too, was something to be used toward his new 
ends. Naturally, the creative side of his mind suffered 


210 HORATIO’S STORY 

first, but I am not certain that he ever possessed the faculty 
for independent thinking of a non-critical type. His 
critical, historical, and interpretative ability developed with 
great rapidity, and his name did become widely known. 
His book on the “Feud with Psychology” justly secured 
renown. It was a fine study; it brought together all the 
diverse forces in contemporary thought. Nevertheless, 
even in the criticism of the various recent schools, the 
context or the footnotes would reveal the presence of some 
obscure article or book in which these relevant matters 
were first disclosed. The genius of O’Flarity Child still 
seems to lie in his ability to judge what his contemporaries 
are ready to read and the faculty of setting things down in 
a way in which his readers are eager to review them. 

His personal life suffered next. He loved his wife, he 
was a model husband; but his career was the important 
thing. Everything else was purely secondary. When they 
had first met she was the stronger, and it was her strength 
that had gone into his life and changed it. Then he came 
to regard her as wholly extraneous in his career-worship, 
chiefly because, I think, at any rate, she did not regard his 
career as her own. 

And his personal relationships toward other people were 
radically altered. He cultivated the most influential mem¬ 
bers of the faculty; he talked down to the students. He 
filled his mind with sensational reports of matters of gen¬ 
eral interest. Whether it was a scandal on the stock 
exchange, a famous divorce case, or the returning delegates 
from the Peace Conference, he would have an inside line, 
some confidential information, some sensational sidelight 
that illuminated the whole affair. His name became asso¬ 
ciated with those of leading young men in other professions, 
journalists, lawyers, publicists; and he would refer to 
Mr. Haskins Doyle, formerly of the State Department and 
one of the younger hangers-on at Versailles, as my “friend 


2 II 


HORATIO’S STORY 

Doyle”, and William Edgemere, the novelist, as “Billy 
Edge . But if he did make a good deal of these names, it 
must be admitted that people who met him once remem¬ 
bered him, and that with personal beauty such as his, a 
man can always make a killing in society no matter how 
unsophisticated. Meeting these people once or twice at a 
luncheon table was enough for him to feel honestly that he 
was one of their exquisite little circle of men called early 
to greatness. 

Rhoda did not take all this very calmly and could not 
see it as a mere phase. She, too, had wanted to take the 
world by storm. But if she had not succeeded in taking 
many fortresses, she had a few valid excuses. In the first 
place, Rhoda wanted to be a complete personality; she 
wanted to live the life of a person who respects certain 
things. In fact, her career often met disaster largely 
because she never thought of it except as a means to 
preserve her self-respect. She worked because she be¬ 
lieved that a woman ought to work. 

I thought her resting upon a firmer philosophic basis 
than her learned husband. She at least had a sense of 
values. First, she was a woman; then she was a worker. 
O’Flarity wouldn’t have admitted that first you are a 
careerist, and second you are a man. Rhoda’s philosophy 
softened her naturally bitter and aggressive temperament; 
it made her kindly and willing to sacrifice herself. Had 
she not, on two important occasions, given up her own 
career for his? She should never have remembered it if 
he had remembered to manifest the slightest real gratitude. 
But the turn that his character had taken since marriage 
robbed him of many of the more delicate human virtues 
that he had at one time possessed to a striking degree. 
Modesty, sensitiveness, delicacy of emotion, and largeness 
of mind, seemed to have cut loose. At any rate he could 
not hold them. 


212 


HORATIO’S STORY 


He seemed to cherish a secret hope that Rhoda would 
give up her journalistic position. He would talk encour¬ 
agingly of free-lancing. He was unsatisfied with his 
home, but did not approach the matter directly. He would 
make little remarks painfully frequently, about the diffi¬ 
culties he suffered in minor matters of domestic comfort. 
There was always the mending, the imperfect shopping, 
the undisciplined help raising pandemonium in the pantry. 

Yet he could do nothing to solve these problems himself. 
He made a great deal of what he called his inability to use 
his hands. I imagined the helplessness chiefly a matter of 
affectation, but as the years went on, what was once 
affected as a means of self-protection from certain duties 
became second nature to him. I always thought that when 
first asked to help with the dishes he broke a great many 
on purpose. But that is somewhat unfair because, when he 
first tried to run an automobile, he really wanted to learn, 
but succeeded only in raising great havoc with the young 
fruit trees a half mile from his garage, and he never tried 
it again. 

It was certainly not because he was incapable of prac¬ 
ticality that he remained helpless, for in the pursuit of his 
career he was intensely practical with results that ought 
to have tempted him to apply the same methods elsewhere. 
His sense of proportion seemed to adjust itself only to the 
perspective of his vision of professional mastery. 

Our own relations became strained, and I became aware 
of my insecurity with him very shortly after his trip 
abroad. Chiefly for the sake of Rhoda, but partly because 
I thought that he might some day be ready to listen to 
criticism, I avoided a clash of opinion. 

At first he had used me as the object of youthful wor¬ 
ship. Then his attitude toward me was that of a young 
chap who had married into the family, for although Rhoda 
was but distantly related to me, I was the only member 


HORATIO’S STORY 


2 13 


of her family occupying a real place in her life. And 
by the time this had worn off, that is, after seven years 
of marriage, O. F., as the untamed lion cub of the univer¬ 
sity, began to feel he had very little in common with me 
after all, and that I was no longer a significant factor 
in his life, which was perfectly true. There was very 
little probability that O. F. would remain long at Arling¬ 
ton. Presently an offer would come to him from a uni¬ 
versity that he thought great enough to warrant his mak¬ 
ing the change. Then he would leave us. 

Always clearly aware of what she was doing, Rhoda 
had perforce taken her bearings in Belmont society. 
Flarey accepted this as a matter of course. He had never 
felt capable of managing his social affairs. He had no 
sense of number and it seemed to him quite irrelevant 
whether he invited ten or twenty, or whether he asked 
eighteen men and two women or two men and eighteen 
women. Rhoda was therefore compelled to take up a role 
that ill suited her. She had always been an indulgent per¬ 
son socially; she had great difficulty in speaking to more 
than one or possibly two persons. O. F. made no differen¬ 
tiation in numbers, which was his most conspicuous limita¬ 
tion as a teacher as well as in friendship. He never spoke 
personally; he addressed the multitudes. He never asked 
not to be quoted; he wished full publicity on every detail. 

The upshot of this social tendency was unpleasant rather 
than gratifying. Everything had to be done by Rhoda, 
whose best energies were centred in the Tribune office 
in Boston, and whose mind, when at leisure, became 
speedily absorbed in matters that seemed to her of more 
significance. Her own close friends, who were very few, 
indeed, seemed out of place in the kind of affair that went 
to the essence of O. F/s needs. If one of the fraternity 
of great young men chanced to be in Boston overnight, 
Flarey would have a nose for seeking him out and getting 


HORATIO’S STORY 


214 

him and his wife, or any appendages he might happen to 
have with him, home to dinner. The conversation would 
usually take a course that gave Rhoda no pleasure. It 
would exult in the success of their smart, intellectual set; 
it would emphasize the ridiculous in young men of aspira¬ 
tion whom they had not yet felt compelled to treat as 
equals. 

The result was that Rhoda began to dread her home. 
She would come over to my library very often on the way 
home from work, listen to an unbearable interpretation 
of a Bach fugue, have tea with me, and munch her toast 
and marmalade sullenly. “You play those things so much 
like yourself, 1 x 6 ,” she would say again and again. “One 
side of your nature always opposing the other, and yet 
you seem to be so complete and undivided, so sustained in 
your sour old soul.” 

She felt that her maids were uncomfortable, and, of 
course, they were, because the home had never established 
a complete unity of purpose and atmosphere. It lacked 
the administrative vision of a loving eye. Their library 
always seemed to be out of order, their pictures not 
thoughtfully hung. There was about the structure some¬ 
thing of the air of the temporary; it had the restlessness 
and superficiality of a house that is rented furnished. It 
lacked repose; there was no relaxation to be had at the 
Childs’; there was much luxury, but no comfort. 

That same Sunday in June, Rhoda came down to lunch 
in a bright smock of gray Chinese silk, embroidered with 
circular designs. She had a light blue worsted skirt, the 
then fashionable colour of French uniforms. Her exercise 
with Wentworth and her walk with me had stimulated her 
mind, though she seemed at the same moment physically 
tired by her exertion. But there was, in her smock and 
short skirt, the suggestion of youthfulness and vigour, and 


HORATIO'S STORY 


2 i 5 

her hands played in her short hair with lightness and 
charm. 

“Did you have a good time ?” asked Flarey as they went 
in to lunch. 

“Glorious!” said Rhoda, sitting down. “I haven’t been 
out enough lately. I notice that it tires me to ride hard.” 

“I envy you. The army got me used to exercising and 
living a healthy life, and now I never get time to do any¬ 
thing. No wonder I’m groggy.” 

“Are you, dear? I didn’t notice that you were feeling 
worse.” 

“I’m tired, Rhoda. I should like awfully to take the 
whole summer off.” 

“Why don’t you, Flarey? A university man has a right 
to his summer.” 

“I know, but I don’t feel that I can afford to let things 
run down. It’s like letting the fires go out on a big ship. 
It isn’t the university work that bothers me; I have to keep 
myself in harness to step into a situation. Somebody 
might want me to talk, or I might have an article to write. 
Sorry, I’d like awfully to do it.” 

Rhoda took a spoonful of soup, and looked at her hus¬ 
band. He did look tired, a nerve kept twitching over his 
left eye and he would put his hand up to stop it now and 
then. Rhoda thought that his remark about taking the 
summer off was the expression of a need suddenly real¬ 
ized, and she had more sympathy for him than he had for 
himself. 

“Glad it’s commencement week!” he said. 

“Flarey, why don’t you take a saddle horse and spend 
the summer at Chester? You know we could make a 
summer home of it. We could always go there for holi¬ 
days ; we could have guests there. It would be such 
fun!” 

“But I couldn’t be away in the country, Rhoda. I 


2 l6 


HORATIO’S STORY 


couldn’t be so far away from a reference library; I have 
to be established. But we might go out for a week or 
two.” 

“This year I can’t get away myself at all. I was think¬ 
ing that you could set yourself up there; I’d come out 
week-ends.” 

“Belmont’s not a bad place in summer, Rhoda. I think 
I’ll stay here. As a matter of fact I never dreamed that 
we could have such a lovely house as this when we married. 
It couldn’t be more comfortable.” 

After lunch Flarey went back to his work and Rhoda, 
taking a novel that she had to review for the next issue, 
went out on the porch and tried to read. She could not, 
however, concentrate her mind on any subject other than 
that of her husband and his summer vacation, and she was 
glad to meet him again at tea time. He was contentedly 
thoughtful and silent; evidently the idea of taking the 
summer off had not occurred to him again, and after a 
second cup of tea he lit his pipe and lay down. 

“Flarey,” said Rhoda with hesitation. 

“What is it, my dear ?” 

“I’ve been thinking it over, and I think you really need 
a rest. Now I may be able to make some arrangement 
down at the office, I don’t know just what, but . . .” 

“I don’t need to take the whole summer off, Rhoda.” 

Rhoda got up and then sat down impulsively upon the 
floor next to the lounge. She took his hand in both of 
hers. 

“Flarey, dear. I wish I didn’t think you needed to go 
away, but I really believe you do.” 

“People don’t always get what they need.” 

“Flarey, I think we both need it.” 

“I didn’t know you were run down, Rhoda. If you are, 
by all means run out to Chester without me.” 

“I’m not really run down. That’s not why I want to 


HORATIO’S STORY 


217 

go. I want to go in order to get you away from all this. 
We’re both run down; we’re getting groggy. We’re not 
getting on together. Let’s take a summer off and see if 
we can’t get to be real chums again.” 

“Why, Rhoda!” said O. F., jumping to his feet, “I 
had no idea that you were unhappy 1” 

“That is not to your credit, Flarey.” 

“But I don’t understand it.” 

“Can’t you see that we’re getting further and further 
apart every day ? Can’t you understand that we’re not the 
chums that we used to be? Flarey, I’ll chuck my job if I 
have to in order to go to the country with you for the 
whole summer. You know what that means to me, you 
know how hard I fought to keep fit for that job all these 
years and you know how happy I was to get it in the end. 
Let’s go, Flarey; let’s get married all over again.” 

“Rhoda, darling, you know that I love you,” he said, 
taking her in his arms. 

“You love me, but you’ve forgotten how to live. Take 
me away from this hideous house that I built myself. 
Take me out to Chester, make love to me all over again. 
I’m not satisfied with living the way we do. We’ve got 
to straighten the whole thing out . . .” 

He bent over her and kissed her. “Darling, I didn’t 
know that you were so unhappy. Let’s do as you say. 
Let’s cut loose and go out there for the summer.” 

“Shall we take a walk and plan it?” said Rhoda ex¬ 
citedly. 

“I’m sorry; I’ve some telephone calls to wait for. 
Can’t we plan it here?” 

They tried, but something in their immediate environ¬ 
ment made it hard to create the illusion, and then the tele¬ 
phone did interrupt, and before dinner there were callers. 

Nevertheless, Rhoda was exalted. She loved her hus¬ 
band. She thought that most of the real joy in life that 


2 lS 


HORATIO'S STORY 

had come to her, had come through him. It was through 
her love for him that her nature had expanded and her 
sympathy released itself; and her perspective, though 
always far from perfect, had been greatly corrected by 
this marriage. She believed that O. F. had elements of 
greatness, that all the things that had been making him 
unbearable lately did not come from anything radically 
wrong in the essence of his personality, but rather through 
his inability to understand the superficial phases of life. 

She realized suddenly that she had been profoundly 
unhappy for months, that she had been hiding her unhap¬ 
piness from herself, and the thought that they could be 
alone with their love, on this farm, and that they could 
talk things over from the heart out, filled her with a quiv¬ 
ering sensation of joy that she had never experienced 
before. There was something creative about it. There was 
Flarey’s life, and there was her own life, and there was 
their life together that had seemed to die out, and now 
could be born again. 

The blood rushed to her temples. She ran out upon the 
lawn and picked lilacs, the last of the year, and stealing 
back into Flarey’s study she threw them all over him, his 
books, and his desk, slammed the door and went to hide 
in her own little study until he came to find her. 

She had not realized before how tired and peevish she 
had become, how rudely she had been entertaining, and 
how mechanical her writing had been. What they needed 
was another honeymoon! They loved one another; they 
were both fine people at bottom; all their misunderstand¬ 
ings came from little things, and these, undoubtedly, were 
now clearing up. There was no longer the war; there was 
no longer the job hunting problem; there was no longer 
anything seriously wrong with their work. 

She would try to swing her job to Charlie Gilman. He 
would like it well enough and take it in a burst of chiv- 


HORATIO'S STORY 


219 

airy. They could go to the farm as soon as Latin Gram¬ 
mar School let Gilman out for the summer. She had liked 
his book reviews immensely; he wrote in a clear, vivid, 
lucid style and his criticism was uniformly interesting 
whether he found anything to praise or to blame. His 
writing had a frothy humour about it, but you felt that 
there was something stronger than beer beneath the foam. 
Then was lightness in everything he touched, but there 
was also soundness of literary judgment and breadth 
of knowledge about him that made Rhoda wonder why 
Flarey did not have him come to one of his dinners for 
the distinguished. He had been brought up in the classical 
school, and then he had steeped himself in the French 
decadence, and if there was anything that recommended 
him for criticism more than his education, it was the fact 
that he had never experienced the slightest desire to have 
either a journalistic or a literary career. 

Rhoda had been retiring before Gilman for the last 
month. Something in his manner and in his frequent 
attentions made her fear that he was falling in love with 
her, and knowing instinctively how precarious her position 
was with herself and her husband she had avoided any 
experience that might have rendered it more complicated. 
She did not precisely fear that this Englishman, who 
seemed to her so attractive and whose life and character 
remained so much a matter of romantic speculation, would 
play more of a part in her life than she wished. It was 
rather that she wanted to have her mind clear when she 
came to deal with Flarey. Only that morning young 
Wentworth had startled her, and she was glad, now that 
she knew that her love for O’Flarity Child could no longer 
prevent her from falling in love with others, that she had 
kept Charlie Gilman at a distance. 

In most things she was generous by nature. The sacred 
integrity of her personality she guarded against every in- 


220 


HORATIO'S STORY 


trusion; but, when she was asked to give, she could keep 
nothing back. It filled her with joy to throw over her 
prospects with the Tribune if it really meant anything 
to Flarey. There was nothing she would not yield for 
their happiness provided only that she could give as a 
free agent. 

Feeling as she did that Sunday evening, her barriers 
against Gilman fell to the ground. If he had loved her 
she could be very kind and sympathetic, but she had no 
fears of being swept off her feet while Flarey and she 
were rehabilitating their love and understanding. 

She decided to throw her job his way if she could, and 
perhaps the substitution would work out so well that she 
would not have to renounce her post for good and all. 
It seemed a fitting reward for him anyway. He would 
like it and he was hard pressed for cash. 

Rhoda felt deeply grateful to Gilman. When life had 
seemed blankest he had on more than one occasion renewed 
her courage. Not only had he strengthened her faith in 
herself, he had strengthened her faith in the American 
woman. Was if any wonder that she had found him in¬ 
creasingly attractive ? When no one cared anything about 
what she was doing and treated her activities as though 
they were the chief irritants in Belmont society, he seemed 
always to understand what she was trying to do. 

Some men attract women by spreading the peacock’s 
tail, in fact, Rhoda thought, most men do. But Charlie 
Gilman never arrayed his attractive forces. He seemed 
while in her presence to be constantly trying to esteem the 
fine things in her nature that to most men were forever 
hidden. Was it any wonder that she had come to regard 
him as something of a dangerous character? 

To set him up in her position, however, was more of 
a task than she realized. He had not a few enemies even 
before he was generally known. It was felt that he was 


HORATIO’S STORY\ 221 

a foreigner, and that, being a master in the secondary 
school, he was only an amateur in journalism. The editor 
of the book review conventionally had the right to pick 
whom she chose but in giving books to this Englishman, 
who laughed at Henry Adams for taking himself too seri¬ 
ously when he was unwilling to tell the whole truth, and 
who thought when he read “Main Street” that he had 
already known that small towns were unpleasant and that 
side streets were to be preferred, Rhoda broke another 
convention which held that this editor had to send out the 
books within the limits of the Boston coterie. 


CHAPTER XIII 


O’Flarity Child rarely enjoyed his breakfast. Some¬ 
times he could take an extra cup of coffee into his office 
and find it delectable while he read his newspaper and 
opened his mail but, like most people who flatter them¬ 
selves that they work with the brains rather than the 
hands, he didn’t get started amiably before noon. Had 
he been willing to recognize this and spend the morning 
frivolously or in exercise it would have been better both 
for himself and his associates, but instead he puttered 
about as though his mind were seriously at work. 

The Monday morning following their discussion of 
vacation plans found him glancing over the papers while 
Rhoda, whose energy was always best in the morning, sat 
smoking a cigarette and blowing rings over her cup in 
the hope that one of them would find its way under the 
paper or over it. But they would not carry; it was spring 
and the windows and doors were open. 

“Oh, Flarey,” she said, “isn’t it a lovely day!” 

“I don’t see how anybody can possibly get to work on 
a day like this,” he said languidly. 

“As if you ever had the courage to take a day off and 
loaf whole-heartedly!” 

“What’s that ?” he asked. 

“You could hear me better without the newspaper,” said 
Rhoda. 

“I didn’t realize that you were actually talking, Rhoda. 
I don’t see how one can so early in the morning.” 

“Do you know what I’m going to do to-day, Flarey ?” 

222 


HORATIO’S STORY\ 223 

“Going down to work, aren’t you?” She nodded. 
“Anything special besides?” 

“Guess.” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Stupid! I’m going to make arrangements for the 
summer!” 

“Oh, I’d forgotten! That’s fine!” said Flarey and 
picked up the newspaper again. Rhoda felt a sudden 
revulsion of feeling; the hopelessness of the situation 
overwhelmed her. She got up and went to the French 
window and looked out upon the bright green. There had 
been showers during the night and the dampness made 
the colour vivid in the early sunshine. She dreaded going 
over to Boston; she dreaded giving up her job. She would 
have liked, at that moment, to renounce the plan. Flarey 
only half remembered it. Did he really care for her 
enough to make it worth while? 

She looked back into the room. He sat there idling 
over the journals, sipping his coffee; only his pipe gave 
him satisfaction. His mood was one of detached indif¬ 
ference. The sun came out from behind a cloud, and a 
shaft of light, striking an open window, was reflected 
upon Flarey. He drew his hand up first to shield his eye, 
and then passed his fingers through his hair caressingly. 
All at once he seemed to be what he had been when she 
first met him. There was no care, no irritation, no pas¬ 
sionate impulse to conquer in his expression. His cheeks 
had for some inexplicable reason taken on their younger 
colour, and his deep blue eyes flashed in the light that had 
been thrown upon them. He was the same old Flarey 
who thought he had heart disease, who was studious 
without being aggressive, whose mind was clear, tolerant, 
curious, searching, and who never limited himself by mate¬ 
rial ends. It was once more the Flarey who cared for 
work only for its own sake. 


224 


HORATIO'S STORY 


“This man Lloyd George is certainly an incomprehen¬ 
sible person!” said O. F., laying down the paper. Full 
of good humour, he looked up at Rhoda. “Why do you 
smile at me?” he asked in the same peaceful, reassuring 
manner of his youth. 

“Just because I like you a little bit,” she whispered, 
blowing him a kiss, “and because I’m happy!” 

She was happy. She kissed him, went to her work¬ 
room, and, filling her bag, hurried off to the trolley. It 
was too much of a bother to go in the motor. She took a 
seat by a window and looked out at the landscape blankly 
while the wind tossed back the loose ends of her short 
hair. 

“The earth renews itself,” she murmured, and thoughts 
hurried through her mind too quickly to leave any impres¬ 
sion that could be reduced to words. Oh, what a glorious 
thing was the spring! Did it not promise the fulness of 
life? 

It was not all Flarey’s fault. She had herself once 
urged him to be more ambitious in a practical way. They 
both needed to stop and think, to learn something, if pos¬ 
sible, from their experience. 

She had no doubt that she could win back his love. 
After all, it was not only his love for her that she sought 
to win back; it was his love for philosophy and for life 
and for nature. Why should he, the biggest man she 
knew, be wasting himself upon petty things? How out¬ 
rageous it all was! 

At Cambridge she changed for the subway. Her spirits 
shifted from faith to doubt. After all, could he ever 
really understand what she was trying to do in life? 
Could any man? 

There was Gilman. But Gilman loved women and lost 
all interest in himself in their presence. Did he really 
know what he was about? Flarey had many faults; for 


HORATIO'S STORY 


225 


one thing, he was too matter-of-fact. It seemed to him 
that he should have a wife and love her, and she should 
love him. But it was egotistic of him never to take an 
interest in any woman for her own sake. All the little 
things that men do for women he did, if at all, because 
he thought that a man should be in the nature of things 
considerate. Rhoda, who was herself no apostle of good 
form, thought Flarey’s manners shocking. It was one 
thing, she believed, to have bad manners in a conven¬ 
tional sense, but quite another if the source of the rude¬ 
ness is an exalted ego. Flarey needed succour from 
himself. 

She got out at Park Street Under and went to the 
Tribune Building. 

Meanwhile, Flarey left the table and went into his office. 
He threw open the window and looked out. It seemed 
to him that the spring had some compensating advantages 
even if it did knock a man out. June was a bad month 
for the department of philosophy, and he played with the 
idea of giving examinations at a time of the year when it 
would seem more natural to be deliberately thoughtful. 

He looked out and observed a bed of flowers that 
Rhoda had planted. “When I am really established,” he 
said to himself, “it would be fun to take an interest in 
flowers or bees or something like that.” It was remarka¬ 
ble that Rhoda had had the time and patience to set out a 
bed of flowers. After all, she was a great girl, and he had 
been treating her shabbily. He would make amends 
directly. Married life ought to be a bit nobler than they 
had managed to make it, and it would all be much easier 
when she had given up her job. 

About ten o’clock he walked over to Arlington. There 
was an examination in one of his courses that morning and 
he wanted to get his papers to grade them as soon as pos¬ 
sible. It was delightful walking, and he was sorry when 


226 


HORATIO’S STORY 


he reached the top of the hill and saw the tower of Paul 
Revere Hall cut into the horizon. Some of the students 
were still writing when he arrived, so he strolled over to 
the office to pick up his mail. 

To his surprise there was a note from Professor Amah 
of Johns Hopkins. Pie wrote that he was unable to fulfil 
his engagement to lecture at Columbia University Summer 
School that year, and that he thought he could swing the 
appointment to O’Flarity Child, if he would accept it. 
Flarey was pleased that Amah had thought of him, and 
that he believed him suited to take up his courses. One 
had to do with contemporary philosophy and the war, 
and the other dealt with symbolism and logical theory. 
Neither would require very much preparation, as summer 
school work does not ordinarily probe the depths, and the 
lectures would have the advantage of putting him before 
audiences that had come great distances to hear the famous 
Professor Amah. The classes would be composed largely 
of instructors from Western colleges, people who gen¬ 
erally read philosophical books and journals. He saw 
a few hundred eager students hastening to buy the next 
work of the instructor who had been substituted for the 
great Amah. He was not mercenary about it; the sale 
meant nothing to him. He wanted to build up a chain 
of readers in the provinces. He wanted to enhance his 
personal following. Could he afford to let the opportunity 
go by? That was the question, or, putting it in another 
form, would anything better turn up that summer ? 

He doubted it, and, taking a sheet of embossed univer¬ 
sity paper, he thanked Professor Amah heartily, and said 
that, while it would embarrass him to try to fill his place, 
he would accept the honour with humiliation mingled with 
profound gratitude and satisfaction of a personal nature. 

Posting the letter hurriedly he sighed with relief. That 
settled the summer. After commencement he would run 


HORATIO’S STORY 227 

down to New York and look for quarters. Suddenly he 
thought of Rhoda. That would not be her idea of giving 
up the whole summer for rest. She would have to be 
convinced that it was a good thing, but it was easy 
to convince Rhoda. She was such a reasonable woman! 

The excitement of answering Professor Amah’s letter 
tired him suddenly, and after picking up his examination 
papers he took a cab. He would have to hurry in order to 
prepare these lectures; and when he got home he sat right 
down to work. 

Leaving downtown the bag in which she almost always 
carried odd bits of work for the evening or early morn¬ 
ings, Rhoda returned to Belmont a little sooner than usual. 
“I’m too excited,” she said to Flarey as soon as she could 
find him, “to do anything to-day but plan!” 

He looked up cautiously. “These papers,” he said, “are 
perfectly ghastly!” 

“You poor dear thing!” said Rhoda and ran away from 
him. She did not want to bother him while he was grad¬ 
ing examination papers. Her sympathy for the students 
was as warm as though she were still in classes. And 
besides, she wanted to hide in her little office and laugh 
a bit in sheer joy, and perhaps cry a bit too. 

She had not been able to make a bargain with the editor- 
in-chief. He must have disliked her. He said that they 
didn’t like Gilman and didn’t like his work. “He hasn’t a 
newspaper manner and if we let him take the book review, 
he wouldn’t know the right people to ask for reviews.” 
There was something in that; she had taken it for granted 
that Gilman would ask her, but of course she could not 
expect the chief to accept such things on faith. And then, 
he went on to say, they didn’t think enough of her to 
keep the position open. They had taken her with the hope 
that she “would work herself into it.” She was more a 
matter of promise than actuality. If she left for the 


228 


HORATIO'S STORY 


whole summer they would have to put someone else in, 
and it would be unfair to expect anyone to take it whole¬ 
heartedly unless it were a permanent offer. Without a 
moment’s hesitation Rhoda said she would go; she would 
remain only until the end of the week to finish work she 
had already begun. 

During dinner—fortunately there were no guests that 
evening—Flarey was silent and thoughtful. Rhoda 
wanted to tell him of what she had done but something 
restrained her, perhaps the hope that he would ask her 
about it himself, and it was not until they had taken their 
coffee out to the veranda that Flarey showed signs of 
dropping his preoccupations. Sometimes a very little 
thing would serve to break up his absorption, this time it 
was his tobacco. 

“You bought very much better cigars than usual this 
time,” he said, lying down in the swing. 

“It’s odd the way you know enough to distinguish be¬ 
tween them when you haven’t forethought enough to order 
them for yourself.” 

“I say, Rhoda,” he said, “did you hear that I signed up 
for Columbia Summer School to-day?” 

“Why, Flarey, you absurd creature! You’re going to 
Chester with me this summer.” 

“Of course, Rhoda dear, summer school will be out 
shortly after the middle of August, and we’ll have a full 
month there before coming back.” 

Rhoda stood up; she felt at once that she had suffered 
a cruel blow but she did not instantly comprehend whence 
it came. “When did you do this thing?” she asked ex¬ 
citedly. 

O’Flarity told her the circumstances of the morning. 
“I didn’t know you’d be so disappointed, dear, but you 
know I can’t go back on my word.” 

“You have gone back on your word.” Rhoda was pale; 


HORATIO’S STORY 229 

she trembled piteously. Her hands grasped the back of 
a chair. Flarey had never seen her that way before; it 
quite startled him. 

‘‘Please don’t take it that way,” he said. 

“How did you expect me to take it ?” She smiled scorn¬ 
fully, and so foreign was the expression to her that it 
again startled Flarey to see those lips recoil against him. 

“I didn’t really think about it seriously, Rhoda. I knew 
you would be disappointed no less than I, but I hoped you 
would understand. These lectures are really of no impor¬ 
tance. I can manage them without much effort. As a 
matter of fact, if I worked them up as they should be 
worked up, nobody would understand them in that crowd. 
Summer school is perhaps a shade lower than correspon¬ 
dence school. Now we can have a jolly time of it in a 
furnished apartment in New York. You know New York 
is a sort of Mecca in the summer. Lots of people go there 
who never have an opportunity any other time. It’s a 
great chance for me to meet a lot of distinguished people, 
don’t you know ? I don’t mean people at Columbia, though 
of course I’m anxious to meet a number of people on the 
Columbia staff if they’re still in town. I mean New York 
lawyers and bankers—I mean I’d like to get a chance to 
meet Aberdean Duke again and the set he runs in.” 

Rhoda said nothing. She felt vaguely that she con¬ 
trolled her anger, the consciousness of which was not 
without pride. If only she could keep her hands from 
trembling and her knees did not feel so faithlessly impo¬ 
tent. It seemed to her as though the past and the present 
had lost their usual relationship, as though Flarey were a 
stranger, and she a stranger to herself. The very name 
of Aberdean Duke intensified the sensations. He had 
been Flarey’s most intimate friend; he had lived with them 
for a while in Paris. Flarey had never understood why 
he had lost his friendship, but Rhoda knew then that he 


HORATIO'S STORY 


230 

had dropped out of their lives because he feared Flarey’s 
growing philistinism. 

She heard a passing automobile and the merry voices 
of pleasure-seekers; she smelt the fragrance of her sweet 
peas some of which she had picked for the table; and she 
felt the luxury of a long, sweet June evening that seemed 
to inspire emotion so different from hers. 

“Why don’t you say something?” he asked. 

“I have nothing whatever to say.” 

“We ought to have an awfully good time in New York. 
Boat rides and evenings together, and then a month at 
the Orchards.” He advanced and she sank into her chair 
as though the thought of meeting him without spreading 
her arms was too terrible to think of. Usually insensitive 
to her emotional moods, he felt her repulsion at once and 
hesitated. He took her hand from the arm of the chair, 
but it was limp and cold. If only it possessed some life, 
some warmth! He pressed it to his lips, as he used to 
affect that year in France, and later by way of reminis¬ 
cence, but she did not, as she used to, press her hand to 
his lips by way of joyful response. He touched her hair, 
but that only reminded him of how she would formerly 
move her head gently to meet his caress. Finally he leaned 
down and kissed her lips; they were motionless. 

“Rhoda, I’m sorry you take this so hard. Perhaps I 
should go down alone and leave you here if you think 
you’d have a rotten time in New York.” 

“At what time this morning did you accept this offer ?” 
Rhoda asked. 

“Oh, about eleven o’clock.” 

“But you didn’t think it worth while to let me know 
at once.” 

“To be perfectly honest, Rhoda dear, I had no idea that 
you would consider it a matter of much importance. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


231 

Would it have meant anything to you if I had told you 
then ?” 

“Yes .” 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think that it makes much dif¬ 
ference to us now, does it?” 

“Not to us, O’Flarity Child, to me. If you had called 
me up at once, I could have kept my job. I gave it up 
about two in the afternoon.” 

“Aren’t you getting Gilman to hold it for you ?” 

“I couldn’t. I had to keep it or leave it, and I left it. 
I left it for good and all . . . the only job I ever had 
that I really loved.” 

Her own words brought instant relief to her emotion 
and she burst into tears. Flarey had an impulse to throw 
himself upon her, but she held him off with a gesture and 
then fled the room. 

He went for a walk. He hated to leave the house while 
Rhoda was so wrought up but it was constitutional with 
him to pull a cap down over his forehead and swing along 
a road poking things with his stick when his nerves or 
emotions were not what they should be. Usually nerves 
drove him forth for exercise but to-night he thought that 
he was insecure emotionally. He wasn’t quite certain 
whether he loved his wife as much as he had grown accus¬ 
tomed to think he did, but he was sure that a man would 
be a fool to let himself live a life of intense emotion. 

A woman can annoy a man. My God! how a woman 
can try a man’s patience! She insists upon attention, she 
insists upon respect for all the casual ideas and ideals that 
emanate from her inconsistent and emotional nature. She 
loves her husband; but, whenever things are going better 
than usual, how she will come in like a tempest and upset 
everything! Is it because at such times she is not exact¬ 
ing her full tax of attention? Was Rhoda really jealous 


232 HORATIO'S STORY. 

of his career? Was it that that had caused the fury to 
descend ? 

In his wanderings he turned toward Arlington habitu¬ 
ally, and before he knew it he was passing the telephone 
office on Massachusetts Avenue. He stopped and looked 
at the window with its great blue bell fastened upon the 
plate glass and he watched the women operators inside 
idly knitting while they waited for calls. It was stupid 
of him to stand there looking at the painfully uninterest¬ 
ing administration of a telephone office and he wondered 
what had attracted him there. Suddenly it occurred to 
him that he could wire Professor Amah at Johns Hopkins 
and intercept his letter. He started for the door, and then 
held back. 

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with the accep¬ 
tance, he thought. He really wanted to take the lectures. 
His health surely didn’t require the whole summer, and if 
Rhoda had given up her job on the possibility of their 
spending three months together, it was a mistake much to 
be regretted. Those things do occur now and then. After 
all it would be better to patch the matter up than to give 
in to it wholly by calling off the summer at Columbia. 
Besides it was a matter of some importance. He couldn’t 
have been expected to have foreseen it. The job was 
nothing in itself, to be sure, but it would enlarge his sphere 
of influence, it would add to his empire. No, he would 
not wire. He walked home. 

Rhoda was standing alone in front of the house when he 
got there. Her figure, outlined against the lights within, 
suggested to Flarey a type of woman foreign to what he 
thought her nature to be. It added to his annoyance that 
she appeared the picture of passivity. The head was bent 
forward pensively, the hands clasped in front, and she 
seemed to be looking into the flower beds, but he was not 
sure that she really saw anything. As he approached her 


HORATIO’S STORY 


233 

he perceived the regular heaving of her bosom; this eve¬ 
ning it seemed faster and deeper than usual. 

“I say, Rhoda," he said quite spontaneously, “you're 
so beautiful out here in the garden." 

“It's like your beauty, Flarey. It belies what is within." 

“I belie Aberdean’s portrait all right, and that's all the 
beauty I ever had." 

The very mention of that picture caused Rhoda to stifle 
a little cry of pain. She had fallen in love with that pic¬ 
ture before she had really known Flarey. The day after 
he first called she went to see it, and again and again that 
spring she had gone to see that portrait. She thought that 
she trusted the painter's judgment better than her own in 
the analysis of Flarey's character. She had accepted him 
as a thing of beauty that needs no analysis. 

“I'm sorry I said that. I didn’t mean to hurt your feel¬ 
ings. I’m sorry my personal appearance creates a false 
impression." 

She looked at him fully in the face. “I don’t know that 
it does. I was at fault; I mentioned it first. Oh, Flarey, 
let there be no hard words or unkind feelings between us 
now. I love you so terribly and . . 

“Rhoda, darling, I'm so frightfully sorry that this thing 
happened. I don't deserve to be loved by you. Come, 
let’s try to forget about it." 

“Flarey, there's a way out of it that you haven't thought 
of. Why not wire to Amah? The letter won’t reach him 
till morning. Then you wouldn’t be breaking your word 
to either of us.” Her eyes were bright with tears and she 
turned away in order that he should not see, and be moved 
by them to do what she wished. She clutched her throat 
with her hand in an effort to suppress a sensation that 
would only add to her panic, and hurried into the living 
room. 

“I thought of that,” said Flarey, coming after her and 


HORATIO’S STORY 


234 

sitting down, “but I couldn’t bring myself to act upon it, 
much as I should like to. You see, the more I think of this 
the more convinced I am that it’s the thing for us to do. 
Now since you’ve given up your job, come down with me. 
We’ll have a great time, and it will be as good an opportu¬ 
nity for you as for me.” 

“Oh, Flarey, I wish you loved your work more and 
yourself less.” 

“That remark seems to me quite unnecessary and quite 
irritating when I’m trying very hard to conciliate you. 
It’s because I love my work that I’m going.” 

“Liar.” 

“I don’t see how that helps the situation.” 

“I am not meaning to hurt your feelings, Flarey dear. 
All I mean is to undo some of the harm I’ve done you 
myself.” 

“Well, that’s a poor beginning. The fault is not that 
I’m not devoted to my work. And I don’t think that 
you’ve ever done me the slightest harm, Rhoda. All you 
have meant to me is good. This whole affair breaks me 
up. I feel as though I did you a wrong, and I don’t see 
how to right it without doing us both a wrong.” 

“Oh, what I said is true, Flarey. Your love for philoso¬ 
phy is restrained by your love for yourself. Every phase 
of your love for me is self-love. If you had changed your 
plan because you had worked yourself up over labours that 
you dared not leave, if you had been too preoccupied with 
your work to ring me up this morning, I could understand 
and perhaps forgive. If the reason why you neglected 
me and betrayed me as you did to-day was because of 
your love for your work, I could abide having such a 
mistress for a rival. But it’s career-worship; it’s a sort 
of harlot that drags you away from me.” 

“I think that your language is pretty strong, Rhoda. 
I think that you are saying things you will regret. It’s 


HORATIO'S STORY 


235 

hardly comprehensible to me that having known me and 
loved me for years you could think so poorly of my 
motives. ,, 

“That’s because you’re trying to listen to me for the 
first time in years. You have not tried to get my meaning. 
It has been too embarrassing to you to understand me 
lately.” 

“Please don’t be a misunderstood woman, Rhoda. I 
couldn’t bear that.” 

“I won’t, Flarey. You’ll understand me soon enough.” 

“Perhaps it would be better if I went to New York 
alone, Rhoda. We may be seeing too much of each other. 
Perhaps that’s my trouble. It seems somehow unnatural 
that you should be the first to accuse me of egoism and 
selfishness with regard to my work. You’ve been anxious 
about your own career. You’ve been jealous of your 
own work. You have fought for it constantly. Never 
have I known you to take it lightly.” 

“I’ve made a good many mistakes. I’ve gone after a 
career when I should have gone after work. I have in¬ 
sisted on taking a regular job when I should have been 
completely absorbed in professional work. I’ve been small 
about it; I’ve done petty things; I’ve sold out cheap more 
than once. But you can never know how hard I have tried 
to raise my own ability and character. You can never 
know how hard I’ve had to fight to be where I am—or 
rather, where I was this morning. I was never fit for 
any of the professions; I never had as good a mind as 
yours. But I can say this, O’Flarity Child, I never went 
back on my word to you; and, though I did dream of a 
career, it was chiefly because a career has usually been 
something that women couldn’t have. I never sacrificed 
my honour for it.” 

“No, you never have, Rhoda. You’ve made me feel 
pretty small in some ways. I’ll try and make it up to you. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


236 

Once I’m really established, I’ll throw off all this career 
stuff and get really to work. It was wrong of me, in a 
way. I had the jump on all the fellows of my own age 
who were starting as tutors in phil., and I felt as though 
I had to assert my own superiority. In my mind, the only 
way to do it was to clean up on them. And, by God, I 
have! I’m the best known young man in the field.” 

“You are, Flarey, I have no doubt. I used to think 
that you were great both as a mind and a character, but 
I’ve lost faith in you lately. I’ve lost faith because you 
are seeking a reputation for genius directly, rather than 
developing yourself and trusting to God and your friends 
to do the rest. 

“I give you this plague as a memory of me to carry to 
New York with you, that though I loved you with all the 
strength that I possessed, I saw you sink before me to a 
state of moral feebleness. You’re a sort of glorified har¬ 
lot, you’re an intellectual prostitute.” 

They were silent a long time. Flarey was deeply 
wounded. He did not know how to meet an assault. He 
had no experience with life in which such terminology was 
relevant. He had never been seriously doubted. His 
whole manner had dispelled all accusation. The blood 
rushed to his cheeks. Anger, too, was new to him. Some¬ 
times in the army he had experienced similar emotion, 
but he had managed his military career on a different 
plane. It never had anything to do with the rest of his 
life. Military life had been real, but it was the reality of 
grand opera. Such things had always seemed to him so 
far away from life as he lived it. He was as dumb as 
though he had been called upon to address a Salvation 
Army meeting in terms of the species of Christianity that 
that organization dispenses from street corners. 

He sank back into his chair and covered his eyes with 
his hands. 


HORATIO’S STORY 


23 7 


"It's not true,” he cried; “it’s not true!” 

“When I’m gone, Flarey, learn to love someone else. 
Learn to love her for what she is, not for what she is to 
you. Learn to love as I have loved you, then you will 
have something to philosophize about. Then you will 
begin to wonder what people want careers for. You will 
begin to wonder why you did not spend your time in pur¬ 
suit of the noble and beautiful things in life. Flarey, 
dear, when you learn to love, you won’t find it so hard to 
believe the cruel things I said to you to-night. When you 
really love, Flarey, you will accuse yourself more bitterly.” 

She sank down in a heap by his side. He was aware 
that she caressed him, but he could not feel her hands. 
He thought her a phantom and then wondered whether he 
was not himself a phantom. Suddenly he heard her 
speaking again. 

“Flarey, I forgot to tell you that I have to go back to 
the office this evening, and I have to work so late that I 
shall probably remain in town overnight. You leave for 
New York on Thursday or Friday, don’t you?” 

He nodded. 

“Perhaps we shan’t see each other first, so good-bye.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


It was fortunate that O’Flarity Child had no lectures 
that morning. At dawn he found himself still in his office 
where he had spent the night in a chair. Rhoda’s attack 
seemed to paralyze his action, and his mind became flooded 
with unwelcome thoughts that refused to arrange them¬ 
selves in any sequence. 

He was accustomed to success in everything he attempted 
and he had failed so rarely that he no longer undertook 
anything where failure seemed within the range of possi¬ 
bility. But this morning he felt that he had been over¬ 
whelmingly defeated, though he could not actually say 
where the failure was. 

Stating it briefly, he had had a quarrel with his wife 
and she had accused him of a great many unpleasant 
things. She had refused to go to New York with him, 
and she had packed off suddenly to spend the night in 
town. There was nothing extraordinary in that, but some¬ 
how or other he could not picture her return in his mind, 
he did not believe that she would return and if someone 
had said she was coming, he would have fled as from a 
miracle. It was no mere quarrel. Her turning against 
him was the expression of something fundamental in her 
nature, and her attitude toward him had changed com¬ 
pletely. They could never be the same to each other again. 

Child had always despised people whose marital rela¬ 
tions proved unsatisfactory. They seemed to him undig¬ 
nified, and their disagreements the evidence of their vul¬ 
garity. He loathed himself that morning; he did not 
believe he could ever be the same man again. It wounded 
him deeply; it would leave scars. 

Already he began to be aware that there was some 

238 


HORATIO’S STORY 


239 

weight in her attack. Perhaps he was not so much of a 
character, after all. He was practically without friends 
and he realized that morning that for all his large acquaint¬ 
ance there was no one who loved him or whom he loved 
sufficiently to take into his confidence. People associated 
with him either because they liked to have their names 
linked with his, or because he liked to have his name linked 
with theirs. 

He was getting into the habit of taking the university 
too seriously, and taking too much interest in himself as 
one of the promising younger set. Rhoda had once 
warned him that one of his dedications might be miscon¬ 
strued. He had written: “To Palmerson Laureate, one 
of the youngest of my friends,” and P. L., a very great 
old gentleman of eighty-three, happens to be one of the 
most celebrated historians living. Flarey remembered 
Rhoda’s face when she read it: “You seem to say that you 
wish it widely known that you associate with this man on 
terms of equality.” Perhaps there was something ill-smell¬ 
ing about it; he really dedicated that book to his legend. 
But Rhoda’s error was that she could not see how tem¬ 
porary all this was, that it was the price he had to pay 
for his success. 

And she was to some extent right about his work. He 
was sorry about the summer school lectures, but nothing 
could be done about them now. He would go to Colum¬ 
bia and do what he could; perhaps a few letters would 
help straighten out the affair. 

Remorse of a sort took hold of him. He had made a 
failure of his marriage, and it was clearly his own fault. 
He could not say that his wife had not loved him. Luckily 
he could not convince himself that there was another man 
in the case, though he resented her affair with this Mr. 
Gilman. It was her irreconcilable nature that had turned 
them all awry. 


240 HORATIO'S STORY] 

He heard the maids stirring and looked at his watch. 
It was eight o’clock and he got up and switched off the 
lights. The embarrassment with which he faced the help 
that morning he added to his list of Rhoda’s offenses, 
and he took his breakfast without a word other than his 
usual good morning. 

At. nine he started to correct his papers, but his lids 
were so heavy that he could not keep them up even by 
resting his forehead upon the palm of his hand and stretch¬ 
ing the eyebrows. He thought that it would be a kindly 
act to telephone to Rhoda that morning and ask how she 
was, and he looked up the Tribune office in the book. It 
seemed so strange that he had never telephoned to her 
office before! Just as he was about to ask for the num¬ 
ber, however, it struck him that Rhoda should ring him. 
She had left him, and she should make the first advances. 
He put down the telephone with regret. He really wanted 
to speak with her, but his pride was too strong. He was 
a great man. It was all right for youngsters and other 
men to call after women, but he had to wait until they 
called him. After all, the complete equality of the sexes 
was a notion that distorted people’s ideas and made a lot 
of senseless trouble in the world. In action, a man’s mind 
was preoccupied with anything rather than women. No, 
he would not call her! But she would call him as she 
always had hitherto after a quarrel, and he would stay near 
the bell, so that he should hear and wake up from the 
sleep that was closing down upon him. He threw himself 
upon the divan and closed his eyes. 

Meanwhile the morning dawned for Rhoda in Emy 
Goodshoe’s apartment in Boston. Though she had slept 
hardly at all, she awoke with a start at the strange environ¬ 
ment in which she found herself. Fortunately, Emy had 
gone out of town Monday and Rhoda had not seen her the 
night before. It was well, she thought, to be alone for a 


241 


HORATIO’S STORY 

» 

day or so. She shuddered. Her face would betray her; 
her eyes were piteously heavy, and she knew how she 
looked that morning without going to the glass. She hid 
her face in the pillows and it was some time before she 
had the courage to get up. 

It comforted her to have a friend before whom she 
needed to explain nothing, and who would let her do ex¬ 
actly as she pleased. Thank God, there are some things 
in life that seem to remain constant. She had once given 
up friendship for love, and love, she thought, had be¬ 
trayed her. It had flared up and burned her; it had left 
her soul parched and charred. 

She made herself coffee from an electric percolator, the 
sound and odour of which carried her back to the days 
when she had lived in a little apartment. Then, remem¬ 
bering the day’s work before her, she took up the morning 
paper and tried to stem her tears by reading it. Finally 
she got up and walked to the office. As she crossed the 
Common she recalled how she had gone to work the 
morning before, murmuring that the earth renews itself, 
and she walked more rapidly as she felt the tears gathering 
again. No longer could she renew herself; Flarey had 
taken the spring out of her life. She felt old, that morn¬ 
ing, and frightened by her own age. She felt that she no 
longer had the right to think of life as something that lay 
before her. She had hoped for so much, but she had 
waited too long. 

The elevator stopped at her floor and she got out hesi¬ 
tatingly. In order to reach her little office she had to pass 
through a large room full of others, and it took all the 
courage of her soul to open the door and break for it. 

But the moment she used what courage she had more 
came to her, and as she closed the outer door and made 
for her office, the faces of her fellow workers gave her 
a moment’s amusement as they rendered their usual saluta- 


242 


HORATIO’S STORY 


tions. Besides her extraordinary appearance, there was 
the news that she was about to leave to stir up an interest 
in her that morning. Everybody seemed to know that she 
did not really want to go. The faces of her antagonists 
lit up with pleasure on seeing her, and here and there a 
face expressed sympathy, which was even harder to bear. 
But when she shut the door of her little room, she felt 
immeasurably better and began doing little inconsequential 
things to take her mind off herself. She slammed her 
books about; she filled her pen; she opened her mail and 
made up half a column of literary gossip. 

About eleven-thirty Gilman came in. She thought that 
she received him as she always had, that any trace of the 
state of her feelings had been completely obliterated by 
this time. He had come upon business, and the business 
was attended to with her characteristic dispatch. Finally, 
when he rose to go, she rose too, and extended her hand. 

“I’m terribly sorry to tell you that I finish here at the 
end of the week, and that probably means that you do too.” 

“Don’t mention it, Rhoda,” he said, laughing. “I’m only 
sorry that you’re going if you don’t wish it yourself.” 

“I do and I don’t. I’ll explain it all some other time. 
Good-by, Charlie.” 

“May I ask you to lunch?” 

“Why do you ask me to-day? Can’t you see that I’m 
not fit company for anybody?” 

“You’ll forgive me if I tell you frankly?” 

“Yes,” said Rhoda, smiling. 

“It’s because . . . hang it all! I don’t know how to 
express it, Rhoda . . . it’s because I fancy that to-day 
you might tell me a great deal about yourself that I don’t 
know. You’re all very near the surface this morning— 
that is, the part of you that I’ve never met is right on top!” 

“Why, how perfectly stupid of you! Can’t you see that 
I’m a beaten woman to-day?” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


243 


“Beaten? Triumphant! I don’t know what you’ve 
done, but you look as though you were still standing on 
your feet.” 

“I’ll not have lunch with you, if you don’t mind, but 
you may dine with me on Friday.” 

“Delighted, as you Americans say,” said Gilman, bowing 
himself out. 

Then she wondered whether she really meant to ask him. 
She hoped to finish her week’s work Friday morning, and 
go back to Belmont. Flarey would leave on Thursday 
night, and there need be no unpleasant parting scene. 

For a moment she doubted whether Flarey was leaving 
on Thursday or Friday, so she reached for the telephone 
and asked for her own number. A sleepy voice answered. 

“Is that you, Flarey?” 

“Yes, Rhoda.” 

“Did you say that you were leaving on Thursday night ?” 

“Thursday on the midnight.” 

“Well, that’s all I wanted to know.” 

“Am I going to see you first?” 

“No, Flarey. Good-bye and have a good time.” 

“Good-bye.” 

That was all. As she put down the receiver, she felt 
that she had seen him for the last time, that everything 
was over between them. Of course they might chance to 
meet, or something might make him overcome his vanity 
enough to present himself in the modified form of tele¬ 
phoning, but she determined to avoid it. 

Why keep patching things up forever ? They had tried 
for seven years, or at least she had; she had given way to 
him on almost every point. Anything his career demanded 
had been his. But now that he had actually arrived, she 
did not think that she need concern herself with his hap- 
It had been time for him to make a sacrifice for 


pmess. 


244 


HORATIO'S STORY 


her. Firmly as she believed in his genius, she saw him 
behaving like a cad. 

Rhoda knew now what she had wanted all her life. She 
had wanted to be loved, and loved as a person. Sex is a 
silly thing; but love is a great thing. It was not enough 
to be loved as sweet girl grown modestly mature. She 
sought the recognition of her personality, of her measure 
of wisdom, of her capacity for life; in fact, she had wanted 
him to sustain the quality of love she felt in his regard 
for her before they married. But she had asked too much! 
First it slumbered; then it died. 

She never thought her mind the equal of his as an in¬ 
strument. She had not thought her character the equal 
of his until very recently. But one discrepancy was not 
exclusive; it was not sufficient to make friendship between 
them impossible. She had tried to keep up with him and 
so far as his work was concerned she had had no difficulty. 
Only the side shows, the political scheming, the innumer¬ 
able banquets, dinners, and the diplomatic affairs of the 
fraternity of successful men, had been beyond her. 

To her surprise she did not feel the loss of her position 
as poignantly as she had feared. The sorrow that she felt 
at breaking with O. F. obliterated her sense of loss in 
minor matters. She wished that the last week were over; 
she wanted to be alone to think out what she should do 
next. She had been shorn of all that she prized in life, 
and she wondered how to begin all over again. 

The week was full of agony for her. By Friday noon 
she was free and, after a hasty lunch with Emy who had 
returned to Boston that morning, she took the car for 
Belmont. It was with conflicting emotion that she hurried 
up the road to her house. Flarey had gone—she had com¬ 
municated with the servants that morning—and she would 
be alone in her own home to think out the solution of her 
problem. 


HORATIO'S STORY 


245 


She opened the windows and let in the air; she ordered 
tea and sat down to think. She loved the house some¬ 
times, as Flarey never could. 

She was free. The week of sorrow had been too intense, 
and her joy in her freedom came as an hysterical relief. 
She knew that she could never be Rhoda Lispenyard again, 
that her new freedom was more precious than anything 
she had previously experienced. “I was a wilful, self- 
centred girl; a testy young woman; a joyful lover; a 
neglected wife. I can’t understand this new freedom. 
There’s something bewildering and intoxicating about it.” 

There was a noise upon the porch, and Wentworth came 
in. She was glad to see him and held out both hands. 
“Hello, Went,” she said. “I know Sunday was your 
birthday and we were together all morning, but it seems 
months since I’ve seen you, dear boy! What are you 
doing out of school?” 

“I’m through for the year, Rhoda, and father seems tc> 
be away, so I have nothing to do for a change.” 

Rhoda smiled. His condescension was so like Flarey’s! 
She had tried so hard to teach him not to say that he was 
calling because he had nothing else to do, but she had 
worked against nature. The boy had not yet reached the 
stage where he could call upon a lady without feeling that 
he was doing himself a slight injustice, and that was the 
most obvious way to mitigate the violence he did his better 
nature. But Rhoda could so easily forgive in Wentworth 
what she despised in Flarey. 

“Sit down and have tea with me. When will father be 

back ?” 

“To-morrow or the next day.” 

“I’m anxious to see him,” she said absent-mindedly. 
He looked at her; he knew that something was wrong. 

“I say, Rhoda, you look a bit down in the mouth. Want 
to take a walk with me ? Do you good.” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


246 

“Perhaps I shall after tea. Sit down and tell me how 
you did on your examinations. May I serve you ?” 

“Please. You know, I don’t usually drink tea in the 
afternoon, Rhoda ... We don’t romp about the way we 
used to a few years ago. Sometimes we try, as we did 
Sunday, but we don’t get any fun out of it now!” 

“Are you sure you didn’t enjoy it then? ... It was all 
very joyful for me!” 

“You . . . Rhoda!” Wentworth blushed. “Yes, it did 
make me happy, but it was all a different kind of happi¬ 
ness. I’m growing older and I don’t know whether to 
hate or love it.” 

“Please do neither. Don’t love it, because youth is the 
most glorious thing in the world, and don’t hate it, because 
the years have their own compensations. You should be 
happy in your youth; it has infinite promise and hope and 
possibility.” 

“Age must have something to it, though. Father is 
always telling me how incomplete youth is, how impossible 
it is for a young person to get any real balance, or under¬ 
standing, or happiness. That’s Aristotle ! The older I get 
the more I think Aristotle the bane of father’s life.” 

“Sometimes things that are passing are very beautiful 
and satisfying in themselves. Isn’t the bud as beautiful 
as the flower? Life is not a progression; it’s a cycle. 
Sometimes you plan things for the maturity you’re so 
anxious for. You plan for better or worse, and then the 
whole thing crumbles to the ground.” 

“Rhoda, you look awful! Do tell me what the matter 
is.” He approached her chair and took her yielding hands 
in his; he looked searchingly into her eyes, and was aware 
of how little he knew her whom he believed his best friend. 
She kept looking away, and he sat down at her feet with 
his back to her. 


HORATIO’S STORY 247 

“I should rather not, Went. Just believe in me; some 
day you’ll know all about it.” 

Wentworth lifted his head and leaned back, looking into 
her face again. His cheek touched her dress and he 
stroked her hands as they rested in her lap. He was very 
nearly in tears, and the boyish nonchalance through which 
he usually hid his emotions or falsified them vanished. He 
was transparent; his lips trembled and his voice broke 
down. 

‘‘There are lots of things you can’t tell me about, Rhoda, 
and I don’t expect you to. But I think there’s a lot you 
might tell me. I’ll feel just terribly hurt if I’m not a 
good enough chum of yours to be able to share a morsel 
of your suffering.” 

Rhoda had always thought there was something patheti¬ 
cally appealing in this boy, and she had an impulse to 
take him in her arms, but she did not act upon it. To-day, 
she thought, a benediction was the better form of blessing. 

“Went,” she said, “your love has always touched me 
deeply.” 

“How could I help loving you, Rhoda; you were a sort 
of mother and chum combined. You’ve been everything 
to me!” 

“No, not quite everything, Went.” 

“I mean, except father.” 

“Well, you may never have thought that I, too, have 
been lonely in life, and that you have meant a great deal 
to me. Some day, I promise you, I’ll try to tell you all 
about it, but now you must take it on faith.” She raised 
his hand to her lips and kissed it, and the tears gathered 
in his eyes. “Come,” she said, “I’ll walk you home.” 

They walked without a word, and when they reached 
the turn in the road, Rhoda lagged behind. Wentworth 
turned in surprise and stood watching her. 

“Went,” she said, “I’ll tell you this much. You see that 


HORATIO’S STORY 


248 

house of mine? I built that on the solid ground of matur¬ 
ity. I thought when I had that brick and wood put to¬ 
gether there that life was going to be . . . what it should 
be . . . until the end of one of us or both of us. I was 
wrong. There was nothing firm to build upon. All that 
is gone out of my life. I don’t know whether I’ll see you 
again, but if I don’t I’ll write to you.” 

“Where’s Flarey?” was all he could think to ask. 

“No longer with me, Went. Does it matter where?” 

“You’ve left him? I mean—he’s left you!” 

“The first was right. I left him.” 

“Oh, my God!” said Went. 

“I’m saying good-bye to you right here and now, my 
boy.” 

“Good-bye, Rhoda.” 

“Good-bye, and remember me.” 

She walked home quickly. Her emotion had brought 
colour to her cheeks. She had loved that boy, and her 
watchful care of him seemed to her at that moment the 
one satisfactory thing of her life. She wondered why she 
had acted as though she expected never to see him again. 
Did she have some special prevision of what was going to 
happen in her life? She had not decided to leave Belmont, 
nor had Went shown any signs of a speedy departure. 
Usually they saw each other three or four times a week. 
Her bidding him farewell shocked her; it seemed so natu¬ 
ral, so logical, and yet if he had asked her why she could 
not have told. 

Exhilarating as her consciousness of freedom was, she 
felt constrained and defensive, as though expecting a blow 
without knowing the direction from which it would come. 

Upon arriving at home she decided to get her desk in 
order. There was no accumulation of detail, but she felt, 
as she did upon parting with Went, that if anything should 
happen she wished the domestic affairs to be up to date, 


HORATIO’S STORY 


249 

and the bills paid. She busied herself with her check book, 
brought the balance down, and then looked over her mail 
and felt certain that, if death overtook her unexpectedly, 
no unseemly disorder would reveal itself. Or if, for 
example, Flarey came home and she were not there, he 
would find it difficult enough to manage the house with¬ 
out a state of confusion in her accounts. Her will was 
the only paper she felt doubtful about, but in order to 
look that over it would be necessary to call at Hallam 
Seebohm's office. 

Suddenly the maid came in and reminded her that it 
was past time to dress for dinner, and she remembered 
that Gilman was coming to spare her the agony of being 
alone. 

She sought her best gown, one that should have been 
put away for the summer but had been left out because 
she had been too busy to attend to it, and she asked her¬ 
self why she did so. It was a gown that she usually spared 
from motives of economy, but economy, surely, was not 
an element in her confused mood that evening. 

“You're an old woman/' she said to herself, “you never 
used to care what you wore!” It was only too true. 
Flarey had cared about her clothes; she, except for a 
month or two after the inheritance of Uncle Tad's prop¬ 
erty, gave her gowns no thought. But now, surely, it 
did no harm to make an appearance. The lines gather¬ 
ing in her face had been drawn by a realist. There was 
no escaping the facts. She was almost middle-aged, and 
she was unhappy. Not unhappy for the moment, but 
profoundly wretched, and from the way in which she 
appeared in the glass, she had been so for a long, long 
time. It seemed as if she had been called upon to pay 
some long outstanding debts all at once, though it left 
her prostrate. 

She sat down and tried to think. Who was this Gilman 


HORATIO’S STORY 


250 

downstairs ? She did not really know him. And why had 
she asked him to dinner at a time when life seemed so 
utterly unbearable, when she was unable to make up her 
mind about anything? Was she going to take counsel 
from Gilman? 

The maid had long since announced dinner, and she 
knew that he was there. She picked up a lace scarf and 
draped it about her luxurious shoulders. She could not 
answer the questions that troubled her. 

After a hasty dressing of her short hair and a final 
glance in the mirror, less from vanity than to see whether 
she was presentable, Rhoda went down. 

It was a black satin gown with a veil of chiffon that 
made its lines indefinite, yet clinging to her form enough 
to suggest its beauty. There was nothing sharp about it; 
even the short skirt came to an end without a harsh line. 
Her shawl was a simple white Irish crocheted affair, the 
lace of which revealed itself beautifully upon the black. 

Gilman was standing not far from the foot of the stairs. 
He had taken a book from the shelves. His hair seemed 
grayer than ever to-night, but there was something quite 
lovely in the way in which it clung loosely to his head. 
Rhoda had always said of Gilman that he was the only 
man she ever met who never knew whether he was dressed 
for the evening or not. 

“I’m afraid IVe kept you waiting,” said Rhoda, shaking 
his hand. 

“IVe been too much amused to notice it,” he said 
frankly. 

“Shall we sit right down ?” 

He nodded and put down his book. 

“Is Mr. Child out of town?” he asked when he saw the 
table set for two. 

“Mr. Child is in New York, getting ready for a couple 
of courses at Columbia University Summer School. Pro- 


HORATIO'S STORY 


251 

fessor Amah of Johns Hopkins was to have given them 
but he has to go abroad.” 

“I must say I should prefer to be Mr. Amah,” said Gil¬ 
man, laughing. “You are joining him presently, I sup¬ 
pose?” 

“No, I’m not.” 

Gilman looked up. He was aware of having surmised 
more than he had a right to. He did not quite know how 
to back out, so he thought it best to explain away, if pos¬ 
sible, his unhappy observation. 

“I thought you chucked the Tribune in order to spend 
the summer with your husband.” 

“You have a lot of intuition,” said Rhoda. 

“Apparently not enough to keep my feet from tres¬ 
passing now and then.” Though there was much amenity 
about his manner, Rhoda always felt that he was funda¬ 
mentally a serious person. His character baffled her. She 
knew that she was strongly attracted to him and she knew 
that she was attracted to him because, more than any man 
she had ever met, he seemed not to be interested in himself 
but fascinated by life as he observed it round about him. 

“I didn’t hang out any no-trespassing signs, so I can’t 
very well hold you responsible.” 

“You know, of all the women I’ve met in America, you 
put me most at my ease.” 

“How are you going to spend the summer?” she asked 
after a pause. 

“I thought I was going to spend my vacation from 
school by entrenching myself as an American journalist, 
but your leaving the Tribune makes something of a dif¬ 
ference.” 

“I am really not certain that it should. You would have 
a hard time working in without anyone to set you up but 
I’m sure that if you once got started you could do very 


HORATIO'S STORY 


252 

well indeed, and give up your grammar-school teaching 
which must be rather irksome if I understand you.” 

“Well, rather,” he said significantly. 

“Why don’t you try ?” 

“I’m too old. I liked doing book reviews for you but I 
doubt whether I have it in me now to stand the pressure 
of American journalism. At any rate, I bought some 
horses yesterday, and I’ve got to sell them all at a profit.” 

“Horses!” cried Rhoda. “How exquisitely romantic!” 

“That seems to me a much more amusing way of mak¬ 
ing money and no less of service to humanity.” 

“Oh, it’s perfectly glorious!” 

“I was afraid you’d think it low of me. You see, it’s 
really a sorry state of affairs, but I’ve been so much in 
the saddle that I always get back to it, that is, when there’s 
nothing else to preoccupy me.” 

He went on to explain himself. Something about 
Rhoda’s seriousness made him ashamed of the light side 
of his nature. He had apparently been something of a 
sportsman in his youth, and an expert horseman. Being 
in a foreign country and having no associations or occupa¬ 
tions to keep him from acting the part of a dealer, he 
would buy horses every now and then, drive them or ride 
them for a while, and then sell. 

They finished dinner still talking of stables, and then 
went out upon the porch. It was a fine night and Rhoda 
had been diverted from her unhappiness by this talk of 
horses. If there would only be no end to it! 

“I wish I could do something like that,” she said at 
length. “It would mean everything to me!” 

“Why?” he asked, lighting a cigarette. 

“Why, because, Charlie, my life is now something like 
what I imagine yours to have been. I wish I could do 
something that would be absorbing and exciting, some¬ 
thing that would take my interest out of myself and my 


HORATIO'S STORY, 253 

personal problems. Breaking horses would be so wonder¬ 
ful ! If only I could never think of myself I’d be happy!” 

“Rhoda,” said Gilman. He had a way of knitting his 
brows together with a twinkle and a smile without indicat¬ 
ing more than sympathy by his expression. “My dear 
Rhoda/’ he repeated, “don’t you think you have told me 
a good deal without making a complete story of it ?” 

“Perhaps I have, but is there any reason why I should 
tell you any more?” 

“Only because I might be a better friend if I knew the 
whole story. And because I think I have a right to know 
whether there’s an open door.” He was sitting on the 
rail of the porch; his fine profile stood out against the 
twilight. 

“I’ll tell you the whole story,” she said, and without 
going into unnecessary detail she gave him an account of 
her life, and of the events of the past week. 

“You know,” he said, after she was silent, “both of you 
have so much in life that ought to make you supremely 
happy, if there is such a thing. Child is really an awfully 
fine chap. I never liked him really for the same reasons 
that you found it impossible to get on with him. He has 
no sense of humour; he’s not a sportsman in any sense. 
He’s preternaturally childish about life. The poor chap 
takes himself so seriously, and builds a solid wall of prig¬ 
gish self-importance around himself! But I had no idea 
that he would do a thing like that, even a little thing like 
that. Those are perhaps the ways of genius, perhaps the 
ways of imbeciles, too ! 

“I admire your sticking to your guns. Most people will 
think you’re mad to leave your husband for such a reason, 
but I don’t see how with your temperament you could have 
done differently. What is sad about it to me is that the 
finer the nature the more easily is it crushed.” 

“Oh, am I mad, Charlie, to take it as I do?” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


254 

“I should certainly not have done anything like it, but 
then, I’m not your sort. You’ve done about what I should 
have thought you’d do ...” 

‘‘Honestly ?” 

“ ... Yes, I don’t think you’re mad.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Perhaps I ought to tell you a little more about myself 
than I ever have, Rhoda, and correct any false impressions 
that I may have given you unwittingly.” 

“Oh, please.” 

He said he had been born with every advantage that an 
Englishman can inherit except a fortune and a title, and 
that he had never distinguished himself as a young man 
in anything but sports. He failed at Oxford; he got him¬ 
self generally disliked. Finally he married for money 
and took to gambling. Again and again he would try to 
pull himself together and turn life into something decent. 
Finally he had an insignificant position in the foreign office 
and was made the scapegoat of a scandal which involved 
the sale of some information, and his wife began to sue 
for divorce. He was prevailed upon to leave the country, 
and after extensive travelling he had settled down in Boston 
and hoped to find employment that would permit him to 
live in the luxury to which he was accustomed. This, 
however, he never found. When the war broke out he 
had tried to get into active service, but an opportunity to 
whitewash himself with a bit of glory never came. 

“You see the war was a great thing for chaps who were 
buried in disgrace. All you had to do was get into the 
service. I thought that I surely could get into the infantry 
and that if I got out at all it would be possible to go back 
to England and find the past wiped out. But no sooner 
did I enlist than they sent me back here on a mission where 
I remained throughout the whole four years, and there 


HORATIO’S STORY 255 

isn't the slightest chance of my getting on my feet again 
in England. 

“A friend of mine who had left home somewhat as I 
did went into the infantry and was killed. The loss of that 
man meant more to me than anything in years. He adored 
England, but he couldn't keep out of the courts there. He 
went into the war as though it were a sort of suicide club. 
He was my best friend, Rhoda . . .” 

“What a wonderful end! Dying for the lover who 
rejects you!” 

“Well, it's jolly depressing to me.” 

“I wish there were a suicide club for me, Charlie. I 
wish I could end it all perfectly honourably. I don’t like 
the idea of divorce between Flarey and me, and even if 
we did divorce I don’t see how I could pull my life to¬ 
gether. It isn’t so much that I’ve failed as it is that I’m 
disillusioned, and I’ve lost the power of creating the illu¬ 
sion to follow. I’ve been so jealous of my work; I’ve 
been so anxious to have that to fall back upon, to buoy up 
my mind and character. Now that’s gone, too.” 

“Surely, you can get on in journalism again.” 

“I suppose I could, but I don’t feel like trying all the 
same dodges over again. There are so few things that I 
do well anyway. And then my journalism has associations. 
I think of it as I think of this house, something closely 
connected with the ideal that Flarey and I were to live up 
to. Charlie, you don’t know how low I am. I hated to 
tell you what happened because the incidents were so 
trivial in themselves. And yet I’m crushed by it. I can’t 
rehabilitate. I can never face this circle about us here, 
and I’m too old to begin everything all over again.” 

Gilman felt for his handkerchief; he was a man whose 
emotion seemed to Rhoda charming, though she always 
felt that it was too thin, and never dared to trust it. 

“I say, Rhoda,” he said, “I was brought up with the 


HORATIO’S STORY 


256 

idea that a man shouldn’t show emotion any more than a 
horse should show temper, and the consequence is that 
whenever I feel the least hit by it I get all dizzy and don’t 
know how to express anything.” 

“It’s very sweet of you to feel for me, Charlie, but I 
assure you there’s nothing . . 

“Hang it all, I wonder if we couldn’t possibly pull our¬ 
selves out of all this together. I say, I’m terribly fond 
of you, and I’ll try to be an awfully decent chap. . . 

“Charlie, you’re a darling, but I couldn’t possibly do it. 
I don’t know exactly why, but I couldn’t. I’m too old. 
Love isn’t enough for me to build my life upon now, and 
besides, I love Flarey while I hate him. It’s only my self- 
respect that keeps me from him and the feeling that only 
the loss of me will make a man of him. I respond sincerely 
to your friendship, as I always have to your sympathy. 
Your offer honours me. You’ve meant a great deal to me, 
Charlie, and I’m sorry if I hurt you. I didn’t mean it.” 

“Why of course you couldn’t hurt me, Rhoda.” 

“What I really need is a suicide club.” 

“Are you sure, Rhoda? Because if you want one I 
think I can arrange it. Are you sure that your nerve will 
last to the end?” He drew a chair up close to her, and 
talked in a low tone for nearly an hour. Rhoda was 
amazed at his plan. It filled her with new hope; it calmed 
her old fears. “What do you think of it?” he asked at 
length. 

“I’ll see the thing through,” she said. 

He kissed her forehead. “You’re perfectly ripping!” 

“I’ll come and see you before I leave,” said Rhoda. 
“Let me think it over alone to-night.” 


CHAPTER XV 


Meanwhile I had been at a remote little theological 
school near Pittsburgh, delivering a baccalaureate address 
for my dear friend the Reverend Dr. Havelock, a man 
whose obscurity is only equalled by the sweetness of his 
spiritual nature. The old fellow was so preoccupied with 
domestic affairs that spring—he had just become the 
father of twins and his wife suffered a nervous break¬ 
down—that he asked me to speak for him. Knowing 
that the candidates for the degree in his school were likely 
to be better informed than I upon matters historical, I 
chose for my subject religious persecution as it exists to¬ 
day, but I doubt whether I succeeded in convincing many 
divines that fanaticism has followed belief out of the 
churches and into the streets. 

Much as I dislike both unnecessary travel and polite 
preaching, I was glad to be out of Belmont during the 
week of Rhoda’s break with her husband. The story of 
what happened has come to me from Rhoda chiefly, and 
from all the others involved, including Miss Goodshoe of 
Boston, who knew much more than she was willing to 
admit to Rhoda but kept silent out of respect for her sensi¬ 
bility. The first inkling that I had of the seriousness of 
the situation was conveyed to me when I met Wentworth 
as I passed through New York. 

My train reached that city about five in the afternoon 
and Wentworth, who was visiting friends there, had asked 
me to dine with them and go to a play in the evening. I 
observed that the boy was in a bad humour but thought 
that it was due chiefly to the severe presence of his father. 
That, however, was not m this instance the only cause of 

257 


HORATIO’S STORY 


258 

his clouded mind. After the first act his young friends 
went out to the smoking room and, when I suggested 
accompanying them, Went urged me to stay and speak 
with him privately. 

“Anything wrong?” I asked, feeling for my check 
book and pen. 

“A good deal is wrong, father. But you needn’t go 
on looking for your purse on my account.” 

“Sorry. You don’t make the most of your opportuni¬ 
ties, Went. I never met the Senator unexpectedly with¬ 
out pulling his leg.” 

“Seriously, father, I’m worried.” 

“What’s wrong?” I looked at him and saw that he 
was very unhappy, and I dropped my unwelcome humour 
completely. 

“I want you to go and see Rhoda right away when 
you get back. She’s in a sort of fix. Everything’s wrong 
with her. I wanted to talk to her but I didn’t see clearly 
how I could help.” 

“Isn’t she leaving for Chester with Flarey this week?” 

“No,” he said faintly—Wentworth always dropped his 
voice softly in admitting what he deprecated. “No, Flarey 
is here in New York for the summer, and Rhoda has 
left him for good.” 

“Gracious!” I said. “I hope you’re mistaken.” 

“I’m not.” 

“Bad news for us, boy!” 

“See if you can’t do something about it, father.” 

“What do you think I can do that you can’t do your¬ 
self?” 

“I don’t know.” 

I saw Flarey later that evening. We stopped at the 
Arlington Club for something to eat before I left them 
to take the train, and Flarey was there in company. He 
got up and came over to our table. 


HORATIO'S STORY 


259 

"I was terribly sorry,” he said, putting his hand on my 
shoulder, “that the press didn’t give an account of your 
address,” and then he was off before I had a chance to 
hold him. 

On arriving in Boston the next morning I went to the 
City Club. Before sitting down to breakfast I telephoned 
to Jenkins to tell him to send Greggory over with the 
machine. Jenkins said that my brother had left word 
to notify him immediately upon my arrival, and I then 
disturbed Hallam at his breakfast table. He begged me 
to go to his office that morning. 

I returned to my breakfast and papers. I get into the 
habit of looking up my friends before I do anything else 
when I pick up a newspaper, and the fact that Rhoda 
had retired from the Book Review of the Boston 
Tribune was the first thing I observed. It quite startled 
me, for I had not been willing to believe that things were 
as bad as my son thought. What was she leaving the 
paper for? If she and Flarey were not on the best of 
terms, there would be all the more reason for her to hold 
steadfastly to her job. 

I finished breakfast and after a few errands I stopped 
to see Hallam. His office help greeted me like so many 
traffic officers and tried to push me into his private room 
a little faster than I cared to walk. Hal was in a tower¬ 
ing rage. 

“Hello, Lee,” he said, shaking hands. “I didn’t know 
that you were out of town.” 

“How are you?” I said. “Usually you don’t send for 
me after you’ve won something big.” 

“It’s your cousin, Rhoda.” 

“My cousin?” 

“Well,” he said with a smile, “she always was much 
nearer you than any of the rest of us.” 


260 HORATIO’S STORY 

“Not when she’s in trouble, Hal. Then she’s your 
client, Rhoda.” 

“Do you know what’s wrong with that family?” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“Well, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you.” 

“So far as I’m concerned you can tell me anything you 
like unless it’s something that you don’t care to have 
Rhoda know that I learned from you.” 

“Oh!” said Hal. I perceived that I had offended him. 

“Don’t misconstrue that remark, Hal. Rhoda and I 
have been closer as friends than you and I have been as 
brothers, and if there’s anything about her that she wants 
me to know she’ll tell me. If she doesn’t want me to 
know it I should rather not find out from someone else.” 

My brother bit off the end of a cigar and lit it with a 
flourish. 

“You’re perfectly right to stick to that position if you 
feel like it!” Hallam never experienced the slightest 
difficulty nor a moment’s hesitation in calling things right 
or wrong, or pronouncing your casual opinion your posi¬ 
tion. “But,” he went on, “I’m perfectly right to insist 
upon telling you what everybody knows. I won’t discuss 
with you what she tells me her plans are, but I insist 
upon your knowing that Child is in New York, and that 
Rhoda has thrown over her job and is hitting a pretty 
fast pace with that Gilman, that Englishman.” 

“Is that all you insist upon my knowing?” I asked, 
getting up. 

“Yes. I don’t mean to insinuate a damned thing. I 
say it out of a sincere wish for her own good. I don’t 
know what there is in it, Lee, but I hope you can bring 
that woman to her senses before she does some irreparable 
harm.” 

“I have no doubt that she’ll tell me about it, Hal. 


HORATIO’S STORY, 261 

Meanwhile, if I were you I’d not give the matter quite 
so much thought. ,, 

“You wouldn’t, would you? Well, what do you expect 
me to give thought to ? There are ways to do everything; 
it’s my business to try to get my clients to do things the 
decent way. Here I’ve been handling her estate and her 
mother’s estate before her for twenty years without ask¬ 
ing for a cent, and without Rhoda’s ever having a loss 
except on things she did without my consent, and now 
I can’t exert the slightest influence to keep her from cov¬ 
ering herself and the family at large with a nasty scandal! 
I’ve drawn a good many wills but I haven’t drawn one 
with a scandal yet! And now . . 

“I’ve never been consulted on her will, Hal.” 

“You will be on this one.” 

“No, I won’t.” 

“I’ve asked her to consult you.” 

“How do you know she will?” 

“She will.” 

“Well, don’t let it distress you, Hal.” 

“You’d be mad, too, Lee, if you were treated that 
way.” 

“Well, I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Thanks.” 

“Good-bye,” I said, taking my hat with relief. 

“Let’s hear from you,” he shouted as I closed the door. 

Shortly I was in Belmont, opening my mail and giving 
directions about the house. The effect of visiting my 
brother tended to make me restrain myself from going 
right over to see if Rhoda was about that early in the 
morning. The combination of Went’s prognostications 
and my brother’s vehemence had me fairly convinced 
that something out of the ordinary had occurred. 

My mail brought me nothing of interest and having 
already exhausted the papers I got up from my table 


262 


HORATIO’S STORY 


and started to fill a pipe. Glancing out of the window I 
saw Rhoda coming across the grass intending, evidently, 
to come in by way of the very window through which I 
was looking. She was bright and fresh against the green 
of the lawn, and dodged the spray from the sprinkler with 
a gracefulness and vigour that made me cast aside for the 
moment all my dolorous reflections. I opened the window 
wider. 

“Hello, Lee, ,, she said clapping her hands, “I’m so glad 
you’re back! I’ve been watching your windows every 
day. It’s been so lonely without either of you here!” 
She took my hand in both of hers. I looked at her try¬ 
ing to fathom what was to me a mystery, her real valua¬ 
tion of our friendship. Knowing what was in the air 
I was tense, as if a little word or deed would break some¬ 
thing within. 

“Poor old Lee,” she went on, as she stroked my hand. 

“Come in,” I urged, “I can’t see you so well in this 
blaze of light.” 

“Did you hear about Charlie?” she asked as we sat 
down. 

“What about him?” 

“He was terribly hurt . . . thrown from a horse . . . 
broke his collar bone and three ribs!” 

“Good Lord! I thought he was the best horseman 
in the world!” 

“He is, poor chap. They’re always the ones who get 
thrown. That’s just how it happened. He was trying to 
make some money, buying horses at auctions and getting 
them in shape to sell again, and he picked up a wild brute 
that nobody can ride. Well, he started to work him in 
and just as he was riding out of the stables—he was tak¬ 
ing him over to the armoury—the brute threw him up 
against a brick wall so hard that he lost consciousness 
before he reached the ground.” 


HORATIO'S STORY 263 

“That’s a great shame, Rhoda. Is there anything I 
can do?” 

“Yes, go over and see him. He’s in his rooms. Wouldn’t 
go to a hospital, and I’ve been taking care of him for the 
last few days. I got to know him awfully well, Lee, and 
I ask you to remember that no matter what high crimes 
and misdemeanours may hang over his head, he’s a man of 
great parts, and he might be a friend of yours, after I’m 
gone.” 

“After you’re gone!” 

She nodded, and turned suddenly away. 

“Rhoda, this is too much! Hal tells me this morning 
that you’re coming to consult me on your will, and then 
you talk about looking after your friends, 'when you’re 
gone’! Now, I say either let down or let up !” 

“I’m not going to consult you on my will—not that I 
wouldn’t if I needed to.” 

“Not even on the scandal ?” 

“Your brother’s a fool! I’m leaving Charlie something, 
because he needs it.” 

“Well, thanks ever so much for not consulting me, 
Rhoda.” I could not suppress a whistle, but I liked the 
idea. 

“Let’s not talk about that now,” she said impulsively. 

“Not if you should rather not, Rhoda dear. But you 
must admit that it’s something of a shock for a man of my 
years, and you so young and beautiful!” 

“Is it so terribly scandalous?” 

“It’s damned untactful.” 

“Is that all?” she asked, smiling. 

“That’s all I see in it.” 

“Lee,” she said, squatting down upon the floor, “I want 
to sit down at your feet and cry like a child.” 

“Why should you sit at my feet? Why shouldn’t I sit 
at yours ?” 


HORATIO’S STORY 


26 4 

“Because I wouldn’t let you once before; I thought you 
were too old, and you’re so terribly much younger than 
anybody in the world! Because I once hardened my heart 
against you; because, Lee, you’ve been a sort of father 
to me.” 

She leaned against me and looked up until her eyes filled 
with tears and then she hid them from me. I loathed 
myself for letting her do it, but I did not well see that I had 
a right to stop her. Rhoda was never more beautiful to 
my eyes than she was that morning. She wore the sim¬ 
plest possible smock and skirt of shantung with an edge of 
bright green woollen embroidery to break the monotony. 
It clothed her form without constraint. Her voice had 
become estranged from her usual speaking voice. The 
pitch was different; it sounded distant and yet it seemed 
to be unmistakably hers. Perhaps, while she sat there 
dreaming, a deeper reality had taken control. 

“Lee, I like your house better than mine. You did a 
better job than I did.” The words went to my heart 
directly, and without thinking of what I was saying I 
blurted out: 

“It was conceived in love, Rhoda. When I built it 
I hoped that you would come and make it your own.” 

“Why did you ever let me marry anyone else?” 

“Why, because you didn’t want to marry me, old girl.” 

“You should have made me want to, Lee.” 

“I never knew how, Rhoda. I always wanted to be 
loved, but I never knew how to appeal to people.” 

Suddenly aware of the words that were slipping from 
my lips, I got up hastily. “Rhoda, I wonder if it’s quite 
honourable for me to talk that way. I’m terribly sorry. 
I hope ...” 

“Do you think your little girl would ever let you do a 
dishonourable thing? IVe left Flarey for good and all!” 

She gave me her version of the story, and we talked 


HORATIO’S STORY 


265 

about it for an hour or two. It was not for me to offer 
her any advice, and I do not know what I could have said 
that would have had any value. After all, her opinion of 
Flarey was so much better than mine that I dared not com¬ 
ment very much on his behaviour in not going to Chester 
as he had agreed. 

After lunch our conversation dragged. Rhoda was 
particularly warm and affectionate that afternoon. She 
did not realize how she was awakening in me emotion that 
I had thought long since buried forever. She continued in 
the mood of childishness, as though that alone made it pos¬ 
sible for her to keep from breaking down. Finally we 
walked over to the Childs’. I had promised to run in to 
see Gilman, but I begged to walk home with Rhoda first. 

It did not surprise me to find everything in confusion. 
There were boxes and clothing and trunks lying about. 
Pictures were down from the walls and the maid and the 
cook would run about almost hysterically, not really know¬ 
ing or caring what they were doing. When people are 
moving there is hope, but when people are breaking up 
forever there is something about the scene that clings to 
the memory. 

“Lee,”—I could hardly realize that Rhoda was talking— 
“I want you to take something that’s mine to remember 
me by. Do any of those vases appeal to you? I know 
I have no books that you don’t possess already. Oh, I have 
it! Take that lamp you always admired. Do you remem¬ 
ber that it used to be in my little apartment? That rug 
I want you to give to Went. He has always adored it. 
Oh, Lee, do you think I shall have the strength to go 
through with this?” 

“Rhoda,” I stammered, “where are you going? What 
are you planning to do ?” 

“I’m going away, far, far away. I shall never see you 
again, you sweet old friend. I shall never come back, but 


266 HORATIO’S STORY 

you will find out from Went long after it’s too late to stop 
me. . . . 

“Don’t stop me, Lee. I shouldn’t have the strength to 
withstand you. Let me go. Let me go, a free woman! 
It’s so wonderful to be free again, even if one is a total 
wreck!” 

“You don’t want to tell me?” 

“I couldn’t bear it.” 

I said nothing. 

“And, Lee,” she said, holding me to her, “I’ve been too 
obviously friendly with Charlie at the same time that I 
broke with Flarey. I know there’ll be horrid things said 
of me when I’m gone, and my will will seem to prove it! 
But I ask you, as much as you can, to clear my name. I’ve 
tried to be straight. It would have been so easy to have 
lived a comfortable life with Flarey, so easy not to work 
in town and to spend my time loafing. And it would have 
been so easy to forgive Flarey his trifling offenses. But 
I couldn’t. I had to live my life as I thought a woman 
should.” 

“I know it, old lady,” I said. 

“And I haven’t the strength to begin all over again. So 
I’m going to clear out, and none of you will ever hear 
of me.” 

I kissed her lips and believed all that she had said. 

The manner in which we took leave of each other is 
something that I cannot clearly remember. An hour or so 
later, however, I was at Charlie Gilman’s bedside. 

“Hang it all!” he was saying, with his usually cheerful 
countenance shining through the bandages with difficulty, 
“I say it’s Christly decent of you to come!” 


CHAPTER XVI 


It was a summer of unconscionable restlessness for me. 
I remained in Belmont, unable to get into the mood to go 
elsewhere. For a good part of the time I was alone and 
the fact that I seemed incapable of accomplishing any work 
that pleased me had a depressing effect. My mind suffered 
from torturous doubt and suspicion. It was in vain that 
I sought diversion; nothing interested me, and it was futile 
for me to try to forget my loss by wandering among my 
friends and relations. Men’s minds did not for the moment 
attract my sympathy or give me amusement, and the women 
I met seemed to me the merest phantoms. 

I had gone to see Gilman a number of times, in accord¬ 
ance with my promise, and found him in an enviable con¬ 
dition. The things from which he suffered were concretely 
present to his senses, and the glorious consciousness of 
getting well seemed to buoy him up to extravagant heights 
of expectation. He was soon upon his feet, and shortly 
thereafter he left Boston without giving me any address 
or information, and I have not heard from him since. 

Sometimes when you lose sight of a friend you feel con¬ 
fident that the future will bring you together again. But 
at other times you know that nothing but the least expected 
accident will effect another meeting. I felt that way about 
Gilman. There was about him no sense of responsibility, 
nothing that tied him down in life. He left you like a leaf 
that falls from a tree. 

It was not that he was ungenerous or ungrateful—though 
of course he owed me no gratitude—nor was it that he 
did not care for his friends. If there was any reason for 
his behaviour I think it was incapacity. Fine as his mind 

267 


268 


HORATIO’S STORY 


was in many intellectual respects, and present as was his 
sympathy and intuitive kindness, he seemed incapable of 
viewing anything in life in terms of continuity. Perhaps 
he had felt the need at one time in his life to teach him¬ 
self to forget. What remained with him constantly were 
acquired habits, the formal graces that had become second 
nature. He forgot that he ever was a horseman until he 
got into the saddle, but once there it was impossible for him 
to make a mistake. He could forget that he was a gentle¬ 
man and wallow in a condition of life essentially base, but 
when he found himself in evening clothes and in the pres¬ 
ence of women whom he admired, he was by far the least 
offending man I have ever met. Habit remained, breeding 
and acquired tendencies remained, but his mind had no 
power to sustain his thought, his remembrance, or his emo¬ 
tion. He was off, and I never expect to shake his hand 
again, or delight in the flexibility of his highly expressive 
countenance that records sometimes only what he wishes, 
and at other times frankly, boyishly, naively, the passing 
thoughts and emotions of his highly sensitive nature. 

I think I was the only person remaining in Boston to 
regret his departure, unless perhaps some schoolboys at the 
Latin Grammar School. He had never been able to attach 
himself either to the staff of Arlington or any other college 
in the neighbourhood, and he had never been able to make 
any considerable impression on society. He had no home, 
no family, and no means, and why should Boston open her 
cold arms? He had succeeded as Rhoda’s protege, and 
only in that capacity, and when Rhoda went away he could 
not dissociate his name from his former hostess’s vaguely 
scandalous behaviour. 

I, too, took a share in the scandal, oddly enough. My 
sympathy for Rhoda made people see evil in our past 
friendship that they had never recognized before. How¬ 
ever, there was nothing serious in what people thought of 


HORATIO’S STORY\ 269 

the part I was alleged to play in the disruption of Flarey’s 
home. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise. It gave 
people who had always tried to veil their contempt for me 
something to be contemptuous about, and it gave them a 
sense of righteousness for having been unwilling to at¬ 
tempt to understand me or my work. What was more to 
the point than my having received Gilman was the fact 
that I did not join in with the general condemnation of 
Rhoda’s behaviour. 

It was for me a most unhappy summer except for Went¬ 
worth and his education, which I had accepted years ago 
as the most important paternal responsibility of my life. 
Naturally it was beginning to pass out of my hands. In 
the first place I agree without question that a man must 
educate himself, and I never thought the contrary, but I 
consider it a serious matter to present the proper oppor¬ 
tunities. I had felt—it was my secret vanity—that no 
school was good enough for him, and I therefore spent 
a very large part of my time trying to be a model school¬ 
master. 

Realizing that such a relationship becomes increasingly 
precarious as the boy grows older, I told him frankly in 
June that it was our last summer together, and the last 
effort of mine to serve as educator to my son and heir. 
Whether this decision filled him with pleasure or pain, or 
whether it gave him a little of both, I had already im¬ 
pressed him with too much discretion to divulge. But I did 
my duty with an earnestness that added a solemn joy to the 
unhappiness of my mind. 

It had been my custom not to let one of his long vaca¬ 
tions go by without some thoroughly disciplined effort to 
improve the mind. The schedule was this summer lighter 
than ever before, as Wentworth was beginning to occupy 
his leisure suitably without inspiration from me. In gen¬ 
eral I attempted to prepare him for the courses that he had 


HORATIO’S STORY 


270 

himself selected and to open up to him the possibility of 
pleasure and satisfaction in the studies that he had through 
some caprice of intellect decided to shun. Toward the last 
of September we were reading English History together. 
I have long contended that practically all English History is 
taught in our schools and colleges from the Whig histori¬ 
ans, and I thought it of value to acquaint him thoroughly 
with the Tory point of view before following his course at 
college. I therefore had him study David Hume and 
Bolingbroke. Some time and labour were required before 
he could be brought to consider either of these men quite 
seriously, but presently he succumbed to their wisdom and 
style sufficiently to understand and respect the erroneous 
workings of their minds. 

It was the last discussion of our study; you might almost 
say it was our last lesson. We got up early and went for 
a walk. Wentworth’s duty was to defend the Stuarts in 
general and Charles I. in particular. I was indeed gratified 
at the eloquent defense that he gave of that unhappy mon¬ 
arch, for I knew that his sympathies really lay with the 
regicides. And, as it is with work when it is well done, it 
was done quickly, and we were through before we reached 
home. Both of us were sad and it was hard for me to 
break the silence. 

“Next summer,” I said with hesitancy, “you may do 
anything you please or go anywhere you like.” 

When we got home we picked up the mail and sat down 
to breakfast. There was a letter from my brother Hallam. 
I poured out my coffee, and opened it. 

Dear Tee,” he said, “I wish you would do me a favor. 
Rhoda is dead, and I want you to go and tell Mr. Child, in 
the event that he may not know. I received word as her 
executor. It seems that she went into Russia under the 
auspices of the British Society of Friends. At any rate she is 
reported by that organisation to have died of typhus at Mos¬ 
cow, Sept. 1st, evidently immediately upon her arrival. I’m 
sorry to put this on you. 


HORATIO’S STORY, 271 

It stunned me. Except for a yearning sensation within 
and the fast heating of my heart, I felt quite still, as though 
I had suddenly turned out to be hollow. Wentworth was 
rustling his papers and reaching into his pockets for a 
cigarette. I got up and put the letter in his hands, and 
then left the table. 

I went out on the porch and recalled the many times that 
Rhoda had come up the walk to see us, and of the warmth 
and truth, and the joy and sorrow that she brought 
with her. 

In a moment Wentworth joined me, and returned the 
letter carefully folded. 

“Rhoda asked me to show this to you some day, father. 
I think I should have wanted you to see it anyway.” There 
was an uncertain lustre in his eyes and a hoarseness in his 
voice, as he gave me another letter. 

“I was very fond of Rhoda, son.” 

“She told me so, father,” he said, as though he was still 
incredulous about it. 

I glanced up. It had always seemed impossible to Went 
that father and son had loved the same woman, and it 
puzzled him whether to disbelieve my love or his own. He 
went to the corner of the porch and picked up his tennis 
racket. 

“I’m sorry to leave you, father,” he said, “but I prom¬ 
ised a few sets with Pauline this morning.” 

Pauline was a young person who lived next door. 
Already she was impatiently striking a tennis ball upon 
the porch and I could see the regular movements of her 
white outing clothes through the hedges. She plays vigor¬ 
ous tennis, rides well, and has a vile, though guileless 
tongue. Her hair and her skirts are flippantly short. I 
sometimes think she would like to be like Rhoda, if she 
could be so without using her mind; and, as I compare 
her when she walks by the house with what my memory 


272 HORATIO’S STORY, 

holds of Rhoda at the same age, I never know whether she 
is a preposterous fraud or whether she and Wentworth 
stand over the dead bodies of Rhoda and myself. My son 
cut across the lawn whistling, and she ran out and took his 
free arm. He did not carry her racket. 

I went to the telephone and told my brother that I de¬ 
clined to be the bearer of such news to O’Flarity Child, 
and then I took up the letter that Went had placed in my 
hands. 

Dear Went: 

I’m going into Russia with the British Society of Friends. 
For some reason or other, I feel sure that I shall never finish 
the work'I am undertaking. I don't know why, but I feel 
the presence of death, and it comes closer every day. 

Do you remember that I promised to write to you? And 
do you know that I am not writing to anyone else? Not even 
Charlie Gilman, who set me up in this crusade? 

I promised you for a number of reasons, two of which J 
wish to tell you. I love you very dearly, dear boy, and I 
believe that you also loved me. 

To you alone has my life had a real meaning. To you I 
could give all that my soul had to give. You were not my 
child, but I tried to give you what so many mothers try to 
give their children but cannot, I know not why. 

You were a great joy to me. You were the one thing in a 
life, full to the brim of failure and sorrow, that makes me feel 
the slightest satisfaction of realisation. In your life alone I 
was a complete personality; I did my whole duty, I gave you 
all that I had to give, and then stepped out of the way. You 
have learned to love one woman, dear Went. All that I ask 
of you is that you never love a woman less worthy of your 
love than I. 

When time shall make this letter seem less personal to you, 
and when time shall make the loss of your first love less bitter, 
please show it to Lee, your father and my friend. 

Rhoda. 


THE END 


























































































































































